Tis the Season

I arrived back in the (less than) sunny south on Saturday and today is the first day I've had to catch my breath at all. It's strange to be idle. It feels decadent and it leaves me with a sense that I'm doing something wrong. I thought I would combat this with shopping online for holiday gifts. But, it turns out that I hate shopping online. This is something I didn't realize about myself and I am more than slightly surprised.

You would think (or, at least, I would) that anything to avoid the crowds at a mall would be worth-while and awesome. And, yet, not so much.

I find it impossible to have any emotional attachment to objects without being able to physically touch them. The pictures don't really tell me what anything is, either. Most of the pictures are terrible. And if they have 'action shots' of the items then I cannot see my family/friends using them-- just whoever it is in the badly taken picture for the online store. And then there's the whole 'happy accident' of shopping. In the real world you go to a mall/retail store/outlet/etc and wander around aimlessly until something jumps out at you screaming "I WAS MEANT FOR ---!". But most things on the internet are screaming, anyway, so I find it difficult to sort the good stuff from the spam.

Maybe the trick is knowing what you want in advance. That, too, is a problem for me. Shopping for people is so difficult. I have a dim idea of what people would like but at the end of the day I have trouble thinking material things are useful. I imagine it will all get piled into a closet and forgotten by new years, anyway. How do you buy someone a truly useful gift without having it be as lame as socks* or as noncommittal as a gift card?

Ideas?


Edit:
Upon reflection I've decided that some socks aren't lame. For instance, knit socks are pretty amazing. As are fuzzy house socks. But plain white socks....maybe not so much.