1. Never trust a stylist who calls himself Flash - especially when he suggests that if you haven’t shown an allergic reaction to that black dye after twenty minutes, you must not be allergic to it. Even if he does give you a really nice razored cut.

2. Don’t assume that you’ll have time in a single lunch hour to walk over to Borders and pick up the August issue of Gourmet and to read (over a cup of soup) the remarkably lengthy article by David Foster Wallace on the Maine Lobster Festival. (Remarkably lengthy for Gourmet - not for DFW.) You will only get halfway through the damn thing, and then you’ll end up engaging in mid-commute magazine acrobatics so you can read the rest of it on the way home.

3. Those tiny, tiny, tiny little umbrellas you can buy at Duane Reade to carry in your purse are tiny for a reason. The reason is that they suck.