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Linda Lajterman suffered one of the worst experiences of her life while on a cruise with her husband and two other couples. Halfway through Burberry Handbags the trip, one of her friends stopped talking to her—for good.

Ms. Lajterman says she has no idea what prompted the woman, who was one of her best friends, to cut her off. They helped take care of each other’s kids, celebrated family events together and shared confidences. After the cruise, which took place a few years ago, she called her friend and asked for an explanation, but received none. She says she was devastated.

“I would have welcomed the opportunity to apologize or discuss it if I did anything wrong,” says Ms. Lajterman, a 52-year-old nurse from Ramsey, N.J. “Instead, it took me three self-help books and two years to make peace with the fact that someone I thought was a good friend ended our friendship.”

There are 50 ways to leave your lover, according to Paul Simon. But how many ways are there to leave a friend?

I know, it’s a terrible question. But think about it: Some of the worst breakups in our lives are not with romantic partners. They are with friends—the people with whom we often share our deepest thoughts. Friends provide guidance, encouragement, laughter and a refuge. Losing a good friend can be one of the saddest experiences in life.

And yet, many friendships just don’t last. Some simply fizzle out, victims of routine life events such as moves, job changes, divorce or a divergence of interests.

Others end badly. Rob Wilson, 53, a writer in Atlanta, saw a 12-year friendship abruptly end after he mentioned he was voting for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Arthur Newton, 46, a hotel manager from Austin, Texas, had a female friend tell him she couldn’t hang out with him anymore because her husband was jealous.

Michael Hassard watched a good friend run away from him—literally. He had heard his pal had begun dating his ex-girlfriend, so Mr. Hassard, 39, a NASA engineer from Muscle Shoals, Ala., approached him in church one day to ask about it. But before he could speak, his friend turned and fled down a hallway, out the door and into his car. He and his former buddy never spoke again.

Friendships are such a Hermes Bracelet nuanced and intriguing relationship that we even follow celebrity friend breakups, as we do their romances. Why else would we care about Mariana Pasternak but for her tell-all book about her former friendship with Martha Stewart, which ended after Ms. Pasternak testified at Ms. Stewart’s 2004 trial.

“It’s a myth that friendships last forever,” says Irene S. Levine, a psychologist, professor of psychiatry at New York University’s medical school and author of “Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend.” We are tied to our family by blood and our spouses by law, so we are often more attentive to those relationships. “Friendships are relationships of choice, so we tend to overlook them,” she says.

As a result, many friendships die from neglect, Dr. Levine says. And this in itself poses a very sticky problem in friendship breakups: How do you know if you’re being neglected—or dumped? What if your friend is always too busy to get together but always seems to have a good excuse? What if she never calls you, but seems happy enough to hear from you when you call?

And there’s the rub. There are no rules or even societal norms for friendship breakups. Friends who want to split don’t go to counseling or get a mediator or a lawyer, as divorcing couples do. And there typically aren’t a bunch of nosy relatives willing to intervene and relay messages, as there are when a split is within a family. Also, dissolving a friendship is harder than ever these days, with so many digital ties holding us together, from social-networking Web sites like Facebook to stored numbers in cellphones.

Dave Nadkarni can tell you all about it. When he decided to end a relationship a few years ago with a close female friend he felt was spreading rumors about him, he stopped returning her calls, defriended her on Facebook, blocked her on his instant-message list, stopped following Burberry Handbags her on Twitter and changed her name in his cellphone to “Do Not Pick Up.” “It was cathartic,” he says.

But it didn’t work. His friend got the hint and stopped calling him, and he has successfully avoided seeing her in real life. But he still runs into her constantly online, every time a mutual friend retweets her Twitter posts or she leaves a comment on a mutual Facebook friend’s status update.

“It sucks,” says Mr. Nadkarni, 29, a sales rep for a security company in Las Vegas. “It’s like the dog that’s stuck on your leg that you can’t shake off.”

So how do you finish off a friendship? Are some ways better than others?

Psychologists recommend ending a friendship in a way that avoids collateral damage with mutual friends, spouses and coworkers, and allows you to start it up again later, if you want. So don’t hurl insults. Don’t assign blame. Try to be polite.

Here are some tips:

Take a deep breath. If you’re mad, give yourself time to calm down. You want to be sure you really want to end the friendship.

Try a temporary separation. You might find you miss each other and want to get back together. Hey, it has worked for married couples.

Lie. Claim to be super busy—blame work or the kids. The experts are with me on this. They say the time to be up-front and honest with your friends is before a breakup.

Go slowly, especially if it’s a close relationship.

Foist your unwanted friend off on another friend. Friends of mine have used this strategy on me before. (They know who they are.)

Become a Facebook pest. I have a gay friend who has had much success getting rid of bigoted high school friends by making his status updates as flamboyant and politically charged as possible.

Issue an ultimatum—but be prepared to lose your friends.

That’s what happened to Nelson De Sousa. Last spring, he repeatedly got into heated arguments with his two best friends from high school, whom he been close to for more than 20 years. He felt they were too sympathetic to his wife’s point of view after his divorce. In one day, he screamed at them both on the phone. Each of them hung up on him.

For months after that, Mr. De Sousa says there was a “cold war atmosphere” in the friendship. When he called his friends, they often refused to pick up the phone. When they did, they were icy to him.

Finally, he’d had enough. So he left a message for each one of them on their home phones: “Tag, you’re it. I’m not playing this game anymore. The ball is in your court.” That was last August. He hasn’t heard from them since.

Now Mr. De Sousa can’t hear any music by bands that were big when he was in high school, such as Duran Duran, New Order, R.E.M. or James, without feeling sad. And to make matters worse, he got engaged last week and would love to share the news with his old friends.

“I was the cutter-offer,” says Mr. De Sousa, 37, a trade compliance manager from Union, N.J. “But perhaps it wasn’t the best strategy.”

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There are dreams that our conscious minds never register. There are dreams that seem clear when we first awaken but are forgotten as the day goes on. And then there are Burberry Handbags dreams so strange and jumbled that they stick with us for days and even years at a time. These are the ones full of objects and odd occurrences that practically demand interpretation (or an appointment with a therapist).

Dream dictionaries claim to unlock the meaning behind our sleep sagas. I’ve looked into some of the more common dream symbols and what various dictionaries say about them. But, based on the sheer multitude of entries, it’s clear that everything we dream about is ripe for symbolism. And often, our dreams allude to emotions or situations we need to confront in our waking hours.

1. Animals

They represent the inner desires that we tend to keep hidden. If the animal is domestic, like a cat or a dog, it could mean you’re yearning for security and comfort. If it’s wild, it symbolizes primal, baser urges. Pay attention to how the animal’s acting and your relationship to it in the dream. Are you fighting with it? Are you setting it free? That demonstrates your feelings about the desire.

2. Bugs

Creepy-crawlies are the manifestation of problems that we’re not facing. Bugs on your skin mean an unsettling change is taking place in your life. The more bugs you encounter in your dream, the greater your problems and unconscious anxieties.

3. Babies

Babies in dreams are symbols of purity, rebirth, and vulnerability. Again, it’s important to recognize what’s happening with the baby to figure out how it relates to your life. A crying or abandoned baby could mean that you’re not paying enough attention to your own needs. Perhaps you feel especially needy and vulnerable right now, or you might have doubts about being able to take care of someone other than yourself.

4. Candles

If the candle is aflame, that might mean good luck’s coming your way, or at least that there’s a reason to be hopeful. If it’s not lit, the candle could represent a lack of initiative or not living up to one’s promise. A candle that’s blown out has to do with leaving something behind, which could be good or bad.

5. Death

This makes for a sad dream, but death isn’t as ominous a theme as you’d think—it’s more about change on the horizon. If someone you know dies in a Hermes Bracelet dream you have, think about your connection to that person. Is there an aspect of your relationship that needs changing? Or is there something about the person’s life that you’d like to see manifesting itself in your own? Death-related dreams might also be about incoming change or the dreamer’s need to change.

6. Hair

Hair in our sleep life has multiple meanings, including sensuality, self-image, and strength. If you’re cutting your hair, that symbolizes taking power over your life and letting go of unnecessary burdens. Brushing or fixing your hair alludes to heightened self-consciousness. Hair falling out has to do with fear of getting old and/or physical weakness.

7. Work

Who hasn’t had dreams about working? Dreams about your job suggest that certain work habits need fixing—either not being on-task enough or working too much. When worries about job performance leak into our subconscious, there’s a lack of balance somewhere, either in effectiveness or in leisure time.

8. Mirrors

Mirrors in dreams reflect our inner qualities—both how others perceive us and how we see ourselves. If the mirror is foggy or clouded, however, that means we’re not seeing things accurately and need to figure out why. Shattering a mirror is allegedly bad luck in real life, but in the dream world, it represents breaking away from the inner self.

9. People Would you guess the people we encounter in dreams are variations on ourselves? Pay close attention to these figures, because they represent personality traits we don’t acknowledge, either because they’re hidden or because they’re negative. When the person’s a stranger, it usually means the former; when he or she is familiar, it tends to signify the latter, although it could also mean that you should take a closer look at the ways in which you interact with that person in real life, and perhaps change your behavior toward him or her. 10. Roads Traveling down a road during a dream is like traveling down the path to your goals in life. Sometimes it’s windy or full of potholes, which means you Burberry Handbags have hardships to overcome. If it’s smooth, you’re making good choices and feel confident about your future success. And if the road ahead looks dark and looming, it might indicate that you’re making choices along the way without all the information you need, which could produce difficult outcomes. 11. Tears

If you’re crying in a dream, you’re likely grappling with a pent-up emotion that you’re not letting go of in real life, and it’s a way for your subconscious to provide you with the emotional outlet you deny yourself otherwise. If someone else is crying in your dream, it could be a message to you to be mindful of the thoughts and feelings of those around you.

12. Water

Whether it’s a rushing river or a calm ocean, water represents our emotional state. Calm, clear water means that we’re generally content and peaceful at the moment. Murky, rough water suggests we’re feeling overwhelmed by negative thoughts and not making choices that support our emotional well-being.

When analyzing dreams, it’s essential to remember how the objects made you feel. That’ll give you a better idea of why they appeared and what you’re meant to learn from them. Even the wackiest dreams have some sort of meaning attached—it’s just up to us to wade through the crazy symbolism of dream life and find its basis in reality.

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Got credit card debt? If so, good news: the card issuer can no longer hike your interest rate without warning or raise rates on an existing balance. They have to send your bill at least 21 days before it’s due (up from 14 days). And each bill has to show how long it will take to pay off the balance if you make the Burberry Handbags minimum payment–and how much you’ll pay in interest if you do that. Call it the credit card equivalent of the Surgeon General’s warning.

These reforms–and many others–are due to a single new law, the Credit CARD Act, which came into effect last month. Great! Who hasn’t been surprised by one or more of these practices?

“This new law is good, and it does stop a lot of bad things,” says Kathleen Day of the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer watchdog group which published a handy guide to the new law. “But it doesn’t stop everything, and you know they’re going to find new ways around it.”

Why do the card issuers play these games? It’s not because they’re jerks and like watching you suffer. (That’s a side benefit.) They do it to make money. Take away these revenue streams, and the card companies aren’t going to roll over. Right now they’re rubbing their hands together and coming up with new schemes.

Let’s be like the writers on 24 who sit around coming up with hypothetical terrorist attacks, and figure out what the credit card issuers are going do next.

A crackdown on deadbeats

A deadbeat dad is one who never pays his child support on time. But to a credit card issuer, a deadbeat is just the opposite: a customer who always pays on time and therefore never pays any interest.

Interest is the single biggest chunk of credit card profits. The card issuers have always done their best to turn deadbeats into debtors. Got a pesky customer who always pays on time? Make sure their bill arrives a few days before it’s due, then, when they pay late, slap a 30 percent penalty APR on their entire balance.

The CARD Act makes it harder to pull this maneuver off: they have to send you the bill earlier, and you have to be 60 days late before they can jack your APR. But you can still blow it the old-fashioned way: occasionally pay less than the balance due.

“The house is making a bet that you will not live up to Hermes Bracelet your intentions,” says Chris Farrell, author of The New Frugality and economics editor at American Public Media’s weekly radio show Marketplace Money. “If you will pay it off at the end of the month, and you can pay it off at the end of the month, and you actually have that discipline, it’s a really good deal. The strategy doesn’t work if it turns out you do it every other month.”

If you do show steely discipline and pay in full consistently, the card issuer is now likely to reward you by lowering your credit limit or canceling your account. Happy trails.

Here, have some rewards

That’s not to say that reward cards are going away. In order to explain why credit card issuers love reward cards, I have to use a term that will make many of you close your browser in disgust. It’s not dirty, it’s boring: interchange fees. Although, when you think about it, it does sound kind of dirty.

When you swipe your card for a $100 purchase at Urban Outfitters, the store doesn’t receive the full amount. A few pennies go to Visa (or MasterCard or Amex). A much larger chunk, 1 to 3 percent, goes to the bank that issued the credit card. This is the interchange fee.

The interchange fee isn’t the same on all transactions. It depends on a lot of factors, one of which is whether you’re using a reward card: reward cards carry higher interchange fees.

So, thanks to the CARD Act, you’ll be receiving more junk mail advertising reward cards (especially if you have a high FICO score). They’re a great deal for the banks: higher interchange fees; reward cardholders charge more than the average person, to maximize the reward; and a significant percent of the rewards go unredeemed. Got some useless air miles sitting around? Join the zero-mile-high club.

Oh, they’ll surely be hiking interchange fees, too. And since merchants aren’t allowed to charge customers extra for using a credit card, everyone will pay more–even cash customers.

Fees, fees, fees

“People are going to see many more fees,” says Kathleen Day. Here are a few favorites:

Payday…for the banks

Subprime mortgages are over. Credit card profits are down, thanks to debt-wary consumers and new laws. Even overdraft fees, a bank’s bread and butter, will be curtailed later this year. What’s a poor bank to do?

How about payday lending? As BusinessWeek reports:

Banks including Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., the fourth-largest U.S. bank, and U.S. Bancorp, based in Minneapolis, are already making such loans, usually from $100 to $500, at annual rates of 120 percent if repaid in 30 days. They’re known as “checking advance products.” That puts them in competition with so-called payday loan stores.

Lovely. Opt out

In short, the CARD Act is good news, but credit card issuers still want to stick their hands far enough into your pockets to untie your shoes. What to do?

“Reward companies that provide a good service at a good price, and don’t do business with the ones who don’t,” says Farrell. “I hope credit unions and community development banks, which offer credit card products that are pretty simple and straightforward, take market share away” from the big banks. My credit union Burberry Handbags offers a simple, no-fee credit card at a competitive rate, but I don’t actually carry it. I did, however, sign up for their overdraft line of credit. If I ever were to need emergency cash–up to $1000–I can dip into the line of credit at a fixed 8.9 percent APR using my debit card. There’s no additional overdraft charge. (I’ve never used it.) The watchword with credit cards is the same as it ever was: check your statement for surprises and your back for knives.

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Miss Swan couldn’t take being a Sunday school teacher any longer. Not for another Sunday。This handful of disrespectful teenagers snapped their gum during prayer Burberry Handbags time and read magazines during Bible study. But most awful of all，at prayer re-quest they asked the Lord to increase their weekly allowance

“I have had it with you. I quit。”she screamed at the students. “Cool，”Rick said nodding in approval. He was the rudest kid she’d ever met.

It took two months to find a new replacement for that Sunday school class. The pastor escorted Miss Betty Ray in to meet the pseudo-angelic-looking group. New in town，she hadn’t heard of their reputation for chasing off teachers. By the look of her pink dress，one size too small，and her bad blonde bleach job，the students obviously felt they had an easy mark. Soon bets were taken as to how long Miss Betty would last

Betty introduced herself，stating that she recently came from the South. She certainly looked like a southern belle who wore outdated clothes and whose beauty had peaked a decade earlier，only she didn’t know it yet. Snickers rip pled in the room as she rummaged through the huge shoulder bag she carried for a purse

“Have any of you ever been out of state？”she asked in a friendly tone. A few hands went up.

　　”Anyone travel beyond five hundred miles？”One hand went up as the snickering diminished

“Anyone visited outside the country？”No hands went up now. The silent teens were puz-zled. What did this have to do with anything？Was she using psychology on them，or was she just plain clueless？

Finally，Betty’s bony hand struck on what she had been searching for in her handbag. Pulling up a long tube，she unrolled a map of the world. “What else do you have in there？Lunch？”Someone cracked. Betty smiled lightly and answered，”Cookies for later. “”Cool，”Rick quipped.

Then she pointed with a long fingernail to an odd-shaped continent. “I was born here，”she tapped with her finger. “And I lived here until I was about your age. “Everyone craned their neck Hermes Bracelet to see where it was. “Is that Texas？”Someone sitting in the back asked. “Not even close. It is India. “Her eyes twinkled with joy.

“How did you get way over there to be born？”Betty laughed. “My parents were missionaries there，and that is where my mother was when I came into the world. ”

“Cool!”Rick leaned back in his chair duly impressed. Betty fumbled again in her purse，this time pulling out a handful of old wrinkled pictures along with a tin of chocolate chip cookies. They passed the pictures around，viewing each with great in terest. Dark faces stared up from the photos，frozen in time. The kids studied them as they bit into the sweets

　”You don’t have to be a missionary–everyone can do something in this world to help another，”Miss Betty said. The hour quickly slid by as she told them her stories about faraway places and what the people were like there and how they lived.

“Wow，this is as exciting as TV。”one young girl told her.

Sunday after Sunday，Betty came to class，tying her lessons to their everyday lives. She told the teens how they could make a difference right now. The students grew to love her，bleached blonde hair and all. The more they liked her，the lovelier she became.

Betty taught that Sunday school class for twenty years. Though she never married，or had children of her own，the town came to think of her as a surrogate parent since she taught two generations of children. At last，her hair grew into a natural gray. Increasing wrinkles about her mouth and eyes added character to her cherub face. Her hands began to shake with age. Every now and then，she received a letter from a former student. There was a doctor，a research scientist，a homemaker，a businessman，and many teachers among them.

One day she reached into her mailbox and pulled out a blue envelope with a familiar foreign stamp in the upper right-hand corner. In the left corner was the name of a boy in that very first Sunday school class，years ago. She recalled how he’d always liked her cookies and seemed so interested in her lessons. A picture slid Burberry Handbags out of the envelope and onto her lap. Squinting her eyes，she smiled at the man in the photo，still seeing the teenage boy in him. Standing in the rubble，in the city of Delhi，India，he stood with other volunteers who had come to help the earthquake victims.

The caption read，”Because of you，I am here now. “

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Competition is a common phenomenon in our social life. We compete when we play games and when we try to do better than others in our study. There is constant competition for Burberry Handbags academic degrees, jobs, customers, money and so forth. In a sense, competition is one of the motive forces to the development of society.

In the natural world, the weak will be replaced by the strong and the fittest can live; therefore, the only way to survive is to be competitive. Growing in a competitive environment is important for a child because future adult life is difficult. Finding a good job, for example, is an extremely competitive activity. Today, most people obtain knowledge through various ways and a large number of people get good education. There are also many people who have higher degrees in their special fields. The quality of people is rapidly increasing. Competition is more violent than what we thought it should be. The potentially successful job applicant has to be prepared in stronger position by gaining more qualifications and experience. In the sports contests, the strongest will come out as winners. They become our heroes and they are glorified. In the business world, to beat your competitors, you must be better than the other employees. Otherwise you will be defeated.

In fact, the only way our world rewards people is to give laurels to the winners, not to the losers. What is more, by attempting to compete at different activities, we learn to win and lose, gain experience and know our strengths and weaknesses. Competition prepares us for the tough things in life.

To go ahead, to acquire possessions, we should be competitive. To us, industriousness and ambition are positive values.

Whether in games, in study or in business alike, the Hermes Bracelet aim is to win the game, the degree, the trophy, and the contract. Learning to be competitive is clearly the best preparation for life.