Lessons learned

Just yesterday!
1. If you want only 1 inch cut off your hair and the layers in the back refreshed but otherwise think it's doing ok, you should maybe go to your potential new hairdresser with measuring tape and a more forceful demeanor. Or, after months of growing your hair back to its rightful length after the last haircut debacle, you will leave said hairdresser depressed, with hair not at all what you wanted, and bearing a suspicious resemblance to 1960s Marlo Thomas. Let's just say I won't be going back.
2. If you have made a plan to cheer yourself up out of your generally low emotional state via art and nature, to wit, an orchid show at the US Botanical Garden (apparently "USBG" to the hip and initiated) and some Islamic and Asian metalwork and ceramics just down the road, the efficacy of the treatment may be severely undermined by hair-related depression and pissiness. Look at medicinal art and nature BEFORE potentially dangerous haircuts, not after!
3. No matter how hard you strain to overhear the Central Asian men sitting in front of you on the metro, you will not be able to determine if they are Kyrgyz or Kazakh from just listening to them if you actually have never heard either Kyrgyz or Kazakh spoken.