Besides losing most of my take-home pay when the job went bye-bye back in February, I also lost my cell phone. In some ways, I miss that even more than the money!

I already had the phone and a personal account when I first took the job, but since I would be using it for radio station business, the boss took over the account and paid the bill every month. I’ve never been one to ramble on for hours at a time on the phone, even when I was a teenager, so having a bunch of overage charges was never an issue, not even once. I did, however, use the phone quite a bit while I was in the car.

As far as I can tell from my fellow road travellers, talking on a cell phone is not illegal around here, and I would always check in to see if we needed anything from the store before I came home, or to report on my whereabouts if I happened to run late, or whatever.

I would also use the phone for the boss’s intended purposes while in the car. I’m good at multitasking that way.

But now, I feel like I’m stranded in some deserted wasteland, being without my phone. That feeling was particularly painful a few weeks ago, when BJ and I returned from camp and discovered that a dear friend had been hospitalized, but nobody could reach us to let us know.

Maybe I should invest in one of those instant calling cards and carry it around with me. While it obviously wouldn’t replace not having a cell phone anymore, at least having one of those little cards in my wallet would come in handy during an emergency!

A VoIP company called Pingo offers good rates with several nice additional features. How it works is that you enter your information with the company, buy your minutes, then make your calls. And if I sign up right now, I can get $5 in free calls. It’s certainly worth considering.