re-entry

For those of you wondering how the re-entry process is going, I give you the words of Norman Rush:

"Being in America is likely being stabbed to death with a butter knife by a weakling."

[...]

"America is driving me more insane than I already am. I know this because sometime last week I felt anguish because I don't own a zester."

But I will say that I'm better off than Rush's protagonist who, poor thing, returns from Botswana to America in the midst of the Reagan years. Yuck.

One thing I have not been able to fix, however, is my tendency to convert prices in my head. I keep trying to divide everything by 5 or 6. For example, if the price of a pair of boots is US$120, I think the boots are really about US$20. Never mind that I'm converting dollars into dollars. Work done on my car to the tune of $600 feels closer to $100. This is rather dangerous, as you can imagine.