With my girlfriend working weekends and having Monday and Tuesday’s off, we don’t get a lot of time together anymore.

So last night following our date night dinner, we decided to hit a few stores to try to find a small birthday gift for her boss, as well as just walk off the dinner we had just had. After stops at TJ Maxx and Target, my girlfriend decided she needed to stop at Ulta Beauty for some more makeup for work, and possibly some little gift-bag ideas for her boss.

For those of you who don’t know what Ulta is (I am presuming 99% of those who don’t are men), it is a beauty supply store. As in, almost every kind of makeup, hair product, home spa treatment, and any other thing you can think of.

Think of it as like a Golf Galaxy, but for beauty products.

Now, I was not excited to make a trip into Ulta for two reasons: 1. There is almost zero in there for men to do or look at or shop for, and 2. There is no such thing as a quick trip to Ulta.

In addition to shopping for little gift things for her boss, she needed some mascara, eye liner, lip gloss, a contouring brush, hair straightener and whatever else she might see during our time there.

And here’s the thing about all of those products she was looking for: They have about 30 different brands for each one. So while you might like the color on her as she tries out a variation of red lip gloss, she then might need to try out the other five styles of it, because one is shiny, or compared to the other brand this one is $2 less.

And then she asks you what you think and it’s insanely hard to tell the difference between four kinds of lip gloss that are all some sort of nude-red color that she sampled on her finger.

A good barometer for your time there: take the number of items she is there for, in this case we’ll say four. Multiply that by 15 minutes, and you have an idea how long you are spending in Ulta.

And like I mentioned, there is almost nothing in this store to for men to shop for, aside from one little section of cologne that is tucked away in the corner. So after I wandered over there and sampled some new thing by Dior (she liked it so maybe I’ll be getting some for Christmas? But enough about my sex life!), I made my way back over to the contouring brush area.

After helping her pick out lip gloss and eye liner colors (She went with a dark blue on the eye liner) it was hair straightener time, and luckily Ulta only has one type of Chi straightener, and that was the Ulta brand. For people out there who are debating getting their significant other a hair straightener as a gift, get ready to pony-up some money.

But truth be told, the longest part was her searching for little things for a spa gift bag for her boss, because this isn’t like Wal-Mart or wherever you guy buy your hair care products. No, there are 8,000 brands at Ulta. And all try to sell you on some stuff that you don’t need and probably doesn’t do anything different other than smell good.

Need one with charcoal in it? They have that. Need one with coffee and dragon’s blood (not making that up)? They can help. You name a weird scent or snake oil hair care item that might make your hair one percent more voluminous or shiny, and they have it at Ulta.

After finding a couple of face masks and some fancy spa body lotions, we were on our way after an hour in the store, just as I had predicted.

Long story short: Your girl LOVES Ulta, and if you go in there with her, be prepared to spend at least an hour looking at stuff. But also learn to deal with it, because I’m sure she LOVES when you drag her into a sporting goods store to look at golf shoes or whatever that she doesn’t care about.

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