Brenna, in all her great girlish wisdom, periodically drops a pearl or two on mere mortals like myself. One day during casual conversation, she told me about a phenomenon that caught my interest both as a bold explorer of the girliverse and as a tight-wad. Did you know that you can walk into any department store in America and get a free make over? Much like test driving a car, a cosmetician will coat your face in make-uppy goodness just to get you to try their products. Here's the best part: you're under no obligation to buy.

Armed with this knowledge, and dragging an enthusiastic Maureen with me, I headed over to Nordstrom's one day after work. Here I learned the first obstacle to free make over nirvana. You have have to pick a brand. You see, each individual cosmetics manufacturer has its own counter with its own no doubt highly-trained professionals on hand. You can't really pick and choose from different companies. The problem is, when you're me all of the make up brands look the same. No seriously, when you're me, you have absolutely no idea who you want to paint your face.

As logic dictates, I wound up sitting at the counter with the most aggressive sales person. She was a petite young woman named Sam with a blunt but friendly manner. She represented the Paula Dorf line of cosmetics. Please don't ask me who Paula Dorf is, because even after copious research I'm really not sure.

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