I’m in London right now, and feeling very American. Not in a patriotic or chauvinistic way, but because I can’t seem to stop talking about money. For example, I just paid $22 for  a hamburger. London is an expensive city, but the weakness of the dollar is making me feel like a college student on an allowance, trying to figure out what I can afford. It doesn’t help that the prices of things, in pounds, are about what you’d expect to see, in dollars, at home. With about a two-to-one ratio of pound to dollar, that means that things are at least double. I’m in an airport hotel, the least expensive thing I could find that had wireless access. Most places, these days, if they charge for wireless at all, it’s about $10. Here, it’s 15 pounds. That’s 30 bucks. I was going to order room service, but the delivery fee was 3 pounds 50–that’s seven bucks, on top of the automatic gratuity. I went and got it myself. And the cheapest thing on the menu was the aforementioned $22 hamburger. I’m starting to understand the obesity epidemic among the poor, too. I could have paid 2 pounds for a protein bar; but for 2 pounds I could also get a packet of 25 cookies. The cookies went further. On the plus side, I’ve been avoiding alcohol entirely in favor of tap water. At 6 pounds 50 for a glass of wine  — $13 — and 4 pounds for a beer ($8) that’s an easy call. Maybe I can figure out how to ferment my cookies … — Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer