I'm such a sucker for a freebie

..always have been, always will be. Sometimes it works for me and sometimes it backfires.  Like the time I made us spend an evening listening to a lecture about buying a holiday unit in the Gold Coast (ok, a timeshare) which if we listened for a 90 minute lecture, then had a young 20+ year old try and sell us one for a mere slip of $30k (and then get pissed off when we wouldn't), we would win a free digital camera (no brand and about 1.5 pixel), $500 (redeemable as vouchers at the timeshare complex) or a free DVD player.  Which we chose.  There was dust on the box and a faded picture of a happy couple dated mid 1980's.  It made it through one council clean up collection but was on the footpath with the rest of the crap by the next collection.
You'd think I'd learn, but I don't seem to, as evidenced by the fact I made us listen to a British lager lout give us the spiel on the road side of Koh Samui (near a timeshare complex no doubt).  He got 7 minutes longer with us than with most I think, but when we walked away from him, I'm sure he called out "F**k you!" after us.  The Husband rolling his eyes as if,  "I know you need to do this but really?  In Koh Samui?  I mean I love you and everything, but that's 15 minutes of our life we won't be able to get back"  In fact I'm sure those may have been his actual words.
So a message went out from one of my friends last night - "models needed for beauty therapist trainers - about $250 worth of free facial rejuvenation and dark pigment removal".  Hell yeah, my face ticks both those boxes and even though I'm frantically busy trying to find 2 more hotels for our trip to the US that we leave for in 6 days, along with cleaning out my pantry, fridge, and cleaning each room by room, I still could make myself available at 11am today for 40 minutes of freebie beauty stuff.

Be careful what you wish.

I got the treatment.  Have you ever had age spots removed from your face.  If you have you'll know there is no darkened room with Enya playing gently and water trickling down smooth stones sounds quietly lulling you into that zen space while you breath in deep aromatic relaxing aromas.  No, I lay there with a trainer (wearing pink eyeliner - think white rabbits), two young trainees, harsh lighting, and a scary looking machine.  As I lay there, I realised that this was not what I had imagined, no pain, no gain seemed to be the message they were trying to get me to understand.
"We need you to tell us out of 10, what this pain is, it needs to be at around 7 to be working.".  WTF, I'm not having a baby here, just some age spots.  And so for 40 minutes, they played around with different level of intensity - starting at 25 and building to 47, with a countdown of 3 each time they zapped my face with what felt like a naked flame, or a sharp needle.  It frickin' hurt.  One thoughtful trainee had placed a hand towel over me, which is where I clenched my hand together each time the countdown started.  On one countdown she forgot to turn on the machine.  And then again, I felt like I was awaiting execution and they'd got it wrong, so kept trying.  And then there was the time she zapped my hair instead of my face.  Bright lights, intense searing pain, the aroma of singed hair.  And the result in the mirror was a whole lot of brown burnt spots that will apparently "crust" then fall off "don't pick them".

Holy shit, I'd better look damn fine at the end of this.

And honestly how many bloggers do you know who put photos of their burnt age spots on their blogs.  It could be worse, I could have waited until they got crusty.