Make that 943 CDs

Just when Mike and I finished cataloging and filing our CD collection, we came across a box of freebies while walking home from the subway. People often leave boxes of free stuff out on the street, and it's usually not worth stopping for, unless you want a water stained paperback copy of The Da Vinci Code, an LSAT prep book, or a pair of slightly worn then rejected shoes. We glanced in the box, expecting the usual suspects, maybe Journey's Greatest Hits (No. 94 on the Billboard Album charts last week?!), some former American Idol contestant, a scratched up crappy impulse buy rock record. We walked away with 11 CDs, and we were cherry picking. Two things we determined from pawing through the box of CDs: 1) Their former owner is exactly our age, and probably went to the same liberal arts college, or at least a rival, and may have been a DJ on the college radio station. (Who else would have Bikini Kill, Can and Devendra Banhart?)

2) They ripped their collection to a hard drive and realized you can't sell used CDs anymore.

So, what do we do? Rip them to our hard drive and return them to the street? Or catalog them and interfile them into our alphabetized books? Or, uh, listen to them?