Shop Your Forgotten Stuff

Last week I didn't do so well in my thrift quest, as I described on Monday. But it could have been worse: during last week I also came across a nice-looking pair of adidas Samba shoes in light gray suede with white trim and soles. I thought they were much better-looking and more wearable than the traditional black Samba, but the adidas online store had nothing larger than a 9, and with adidas shoes I need at least an 11, sometimes an 11.5, depending on the style.

Normally I would have zipped over to Zappos or Piperlime or some other online shoe seller to look for the shoes in my size. But I'd just bought that watch on eBay, so I exercised some self-discipline and refrained from shoe shopping.

Over the weekend I was in the basement (which these days resembles a very large walk-in closet), swapping cold-weather clothing for shorts and other warm-weather stuff. I was pulling out some of the shoes I tend to wear only in summer, like my boat shoes and certain sneakers, when I came across a USPS box for shipping shoes. I didn't know what was in the box, and I didn't remember putting it in the basement.

Inside I found light gray suede sneakers with white trim and soles, not adidas but Puma. In fact, this particular style is called The Suede. I bought them from eBay a couple of years ago, and I know I wore them at least a few times because the soles showed minor darkening. But I'd completely forgotten about them. They're not quite as sleek-looking as the Sambas (I think the Pumas are meant to evoke old-school basketball shoes), but they fit and have a decent amount of room in the toe box area, which is sometimes a problem for me with sneakers.

So now I have a "new" pair of sneakers that I can wear guilt-free.

[By the way, remember the headphones that started this whole thing? The ones that separated that I decided to super-glue back together instead of replacing? Well, the right earbud just came apart, so I super-glued that one back together as well.]