As I probably mentioned before, my mom’s side of the family has a reunion every five years at Christmas. This is the year that we are doing it. For gifts, we all draw names. We have four adult gifts to buy. Somebody’s lucking out and getting all the little guys, but anyway. . .

We are buying for my cousin, D, who is some high-falutin’ executive at an internets company in San Diego, CA, although you wouldn’t know that if you met him because he’s very unpretentious. He looks just like Jerry Seinfeld, by the way. Whenever I see him (every five years), I always have to marvel at how much he looks like him. I’m sure he’s sick of hearing about how much he looks like Jerry Seinfeld. He has varied interests and used to be semi-pro (I think) in beach volleyball out there. But, what do you get someone who makes lots more money than you do and whom you don’t even know very well even if he is related to you?

OK, next drawee: D’s wife L. I have met her twice. Once ten years ago and once five years ago. She’s very nice. I think she has an art background or her dad’s an artist, or a jazz musician. She has some kind of job in the high tech industry although I think it’s more on the human resources side of things. She’s very petite (D is very tall). She’s from California. That’s what I know about her. Now, what would you get someone who you knew that much about? I mean, I know more about some of my online friends than I do about her.

As it turns out though, I think shopping for women you don’t really know is easier than guys, because with women, you can always go for candles or bath salts or yummy lotions or calendars or a nice scarf or whatnot. Actually, I e-mailed both L and D earlier for gift suggestions and found out that they are renovating their house big time and that L might appreciate something having to do with home decor, etc. That made narrowing down a gift a little easier as someone had just told me about this new magazine called Dom*ino which is published by the same people who publish Lu*cky. It’s the same thing as Lu*cky, but about home decorating. It’s not very expensive so it fits our budget. That’s what L is getting.

Our other two names — one is my cousin’s husband whom I’ve never met, but I was able to figure something out for him (see earlier post). The other is another cousin’s son who is about 22 or something like that. I have no. frickn. clue what to get a 22 year old guy. There’s all the generic stuff like Old Navy gift card. . . hey, there’s an idea . . . maybe I’ll just to do that.

Gift cards are easy, right? But they kind of just scream, I don’t know you or what you could possibly want, so here’s this gift card for you to go find what you want. There’s no excitement when they open up that gift card envelope, there’s no oohing and aaahing. There’s no — that’s just what I needed or wanted. I know, I could get him a sweater or something, but again, kinda generic, and I really have no idea what his tastes are.

By the way, I think my cousin D is getting a gift card too.

Do you have to buy for friends or family you don’t know very well? What do you get them?