Supermarket sweep

I love food shopping and I can spend hours in supermarkets, wandering up and down the aisle, browsing the shelves, choosing and then returning packets or bottles or boxes. I can be there, looking at pickle and then glance at my watch and realise that I've been in the store for a couple of hours and haven't even managed half the aisles.

There's something comforting about supermarkets (I'm not quite sure what it is though), and I'm equally enamoured of ones overseas. When I lived in Sydney, I truly felt at home when I moved into a house, not because I particularly loved the house (although I continue to be amazed by the number of people you can fit into a backpackers house), but because I could start doing my weekly shop in Coles or Woolworths (R.I.P).

Since arriving stateside to meet the brother we've been to a supermarket everyday. I love this. I don't mind that it's perhaps not how people would wish to spend time on holiday, but to me, it's fantastic. It's not like we're in there for hours at a time, we just nip in to get something for breakfast or some beers, but it makes me feel like I know my way around; I'm already planning a trip when the big brother has gone back to work and I can go and get some sweets for the folk at work at home.

It hasn't only been a supermarket-shopping holiday though. Yesterday we went to the beach, saw an incredibly pointy high bridge and then headed to an ice-hockey game; I remain astounded by the patriotism I see around me and the singing of the national anthem at the most regional of events. I was a little disappointed in the hockey, both in the lack of fights during the match (we only witnessed one, and then the protagonists spent five minutes on the sidelines, which from what I could gather was only marginally more than the rest of the team, who seemed to hop on and off - over the barrier which i quite liked - whenever they felt like it) and the sorry state of the hotdog I had during one of the intervals. An hour or so drive later saw us in the theme park heaven that is Orlando, and more specifically saw me shopping in an outlet park until almost midnight.

Today we went further east to the coast, to the Kennedy Space Centre, a truly fantastic and inspiring place. We saw one of the shuttles on its stand at the launchpad ready to go up into space in the next couple of weeks, and the size of it was astounding, as was the Saturn 5 rocket. I've heard the rumours of the faked moon-landings, and having been there and seen the scale of the NASA organisation, it seems an insane conspiracy, although granted the lunar buggies and landing craft which can only be described as wrapped in tin-foil look incapable of weathering a small rain shower, let alone zero-gravity.

We finished off the day with dinner in downtown Disney, amongst the most excitable of Americans, who were describing this Yarmouth-in-Florida as awesome (had they even been up the road??), and then made a trip to the Publix supermarket close to our apartment to pick up some beer. Just perfect.