No, the Merrell boots can stay for a while yet. Besides, I wear orthotic insoles in them and their original insoles are long gone.

But I am determined to continue the clearance of stuff that I don't use, an accumulation that includes rather a lot of CDs. True child of the aspiring artistic middle class, I grew up with the assumption that all the best people maintain large libraries of both books and recorded music But the fact is that my reading and listening tastes and habits have changed radically over the last 15 years, and that's okay. Cutting back the bookcases won't cost me my intellectual credentials -- and just might help me fit myself into a two-bedroom condo when I have to.

Recorded music is a particular case in point. I see no virtue in retaining CDs as objects on shelves when I have the entire collection stored on iTunes on my computer and backed up in the cloud. If Apple goes away someday and takes my music library with it, I imagine the world will be sufficiently screwed up that I will have more urgent problems to worry about.

Preparing to decamp from this house is an "eat the elephant" project: I have to do it one bite (or carload) at a time. Today it was three cubic feet of CDs I haven't listened to since the iPod came into my life.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, my wicker armchair is back from furniture rehab with beautiful new cushions custom-made for it by the upholsterer next door to the vet. That reminds me -- gotta book the cats' needle parade.