returning to flying after 29 years

I got my pilot license in 1978 when I was 20, continued flying into
1979 accumulating a total of 70 hours, and then stopped when I became
a university student and had neither money nor time. But I've been
longing to get back into it all this time, and yesterday, my wife
totally surprised me for my birthday by taking me to the airport and
saying, "you're going flying". Sure enough, she had scheduled time
with an instructor and a C-172, and she said she was giving her
blessing on my doing whatever it takes to get current again.

So I went through the preflight with the instructor, took off and
climbed out with relatively minimal prompting, successfully executed
two 360-degree steep turns (the instructor actually told me I did them
more accurately with respect to altitude and attitude than he could
have done!), a touch and go landing, and then a final landing. Okay,
so I flared a little high on my first landing but managed to recover
and land without a bounce - I had a bit of that tendency even when I
was flying regularly.

The net result is that I convinced myself that I can handle (or will
soon handle) the physical part of flying about as well and safely as I
ever could. Also, I'm a professional meteorologist, so I probably
still know the weather stuff about as well as anyone who flies.

It's everything else that's got me nervous: tower communications,
controlled airspace, etc. Among other things, I realize that the
entire airspace classification system has changed since I last flew.

I find that about 50% of what I hear on the radio is just plain
unintelligible. It always WAS hard for me to make out what was being
said, even when I knew roughly what to expect, but it seems worse
today. Maybe it's my middle-aged ears.

So I'm wondering whether anyone has suggestions on how to smooth the
transition back to regular flying most cost-effectively. Are there
books or computer software packages that would do an especially good
job of refreshing me on the parts I feel weak on, so that I can save
dual-time for the things that can't be covered well via self-study?

Side note: When I last flew, a C-152 was $19/hour wet, a C-172 was
$24/hour. There was no GPS. There were effectively no electronic
navigation calculators. There was only one fuel sump checkpoint in
each wing, and (to my recollection at least) no strobes on wingtips.
Also fewer switches to mess with on the panel. The C-172 engine was
carbureted, not fuel-injection. And yet, overall, I'm amazed at how
little the 172 has changed in three decades.