About once every week in the winter—or twice, if I'm particularly lax—I go to bed without washing my face. Here's why: By 11 or 12 at night, my apartment's antique heating system sputters to a halt, the bathroom floor tiles drop to bone-chilling temperatures, and the tap water goes only tepid at best. To justify my laziness, I've built up a logic that I actually half-believe: By denying my skin the various products languishing in the cabinet, I'm sort of... toughening it up. So that on the days it does get the de-wrinkling/moisturizing/anti-whatever creams, it will be really, really grateful, and reward me by being exceptionally good-looking and glowy.

I love a knit dress (my obsession with them is well-documented): They're at once sexy and sophisticated, kind of old-fashioned but still of the moment. Since so many of my favorite labels have been turning out excellent ones for the past couple of seasons, I've become something of a connoisseur. That said, I feel like I really stumbled onto something special when I discovered this gorgeous mohair version from Iisli. The zigzag hem and cap sleeves are cool touches, and it's rare to find a knit dress with a pattern, especially one as chicly European as this.

One recent feedback for the eBay store Brown Sugar Vintage reads quietly, in all lowercase letters and with no punctuation: perfect seller. I'd have to agree. Based out of Jensen Beach, Florida, this four-year-old eBay boutique is well organized and more expansive than most, often selling 100 or more beautifully chosen, vintage-but-not-getup-y items at a time. What I love most is its distinct, cohesive point of view. For the most part, you can see one woman owning all of the ladylike dresses, purses, and outerwear on offer. Also fabulous is the fact that the majority of the Brown Sugar auctions start at just 99 cents and shipping is super-fast.

I'll never understand people who don't like online shopping. In the days before the Internet, I'd probably never have discovered Jinny, an amazing and commendably fashion-forward boutique in Columbus, Ohio. But now I've got shopjinny.com in my computer's bookmarks bar and can drop in whenever I like. The store (and the site itself) is a fantastic resource for great but lesser-known labels like Sretsis and Sue Stemp, plus it's got all the stuff you want from higher profile designers like Loeffler Randall and Jill Stuart. Right now I'm fixated on Alice Ritter's sweetly sophisticated short-sleeved ruffle jacket and this delicate and strikingly beautiful, origami-inspired silk camisole by Willow. To add to my temptation, they both happen to be half off.

Anyone who knows me is familiar with (and doubtlessly weary of) my amateur-physician medical obsession. I read studies, I consider symptoms, I draw conclusions. I often guess the correct disease the patient is suffering from before House reveals it.

Dazed after a six-hour flight for a work trip in Los Angeles, I stared in amazement out the taxi window as we waited for the light at Hollywood and La Brea. There, in a barren nail-salon parking lot, an enormous tangle of faux hair danced aimlessly in the wind, a magnificent platinum tumbleweed trying to find its way home to the Playboy mansion, gleaming in the moonlight as it bobbed and rolled along the curb and finally came to rest unceremoniously in a gutter. I laughed.

I'm kind of mad at eBay. In fact, if eBay and I were having a fight, right now we'd be in the stage where I'm yelling and antagonizing and desperate to prove my point, and eBay is being all smug and stoic and infuriatingly standing its ground. This is what happened.

Of all the things I've acquired in the past year (and you know about most of them) my new Nespresso machine is perhaps my very favorite. I've always been skeptical about them, mainly because they use vacuum-sealed pods of coffee instead of fresh grounds, which always struck me as unappealingly futuristic and unnatural—like Dippin' Dots, which I find totally freaky. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I received one as a gift. It's amazing: It makes an utterly flawless shot of espresso in seconds, there's no mess to clean (the pod drops neatly into an interior chamber of the machine after you're through with it), and it's truly foolproof. I didn't even glance at the owner's manual before trying it out, which is reason enough to love it. Yes, it's an investment, but when you think about it in terms of cost-per-use (as opposed to getting a daily Starbucks fix), it isn't so bad at all.

About five minutes into my maiden snowboarding attempt last weekend, my SPF face-and-lip balm flew out of my ski pants. Since I had no idea how to go right or left (only straight down, at much too rapid speed), I had to abandon it in the powdery snow.