Free Long Distance.

The joys of free long distance! Back in the day when I first moved away from "home" I didn't have a cell phone. Shortly thereafter I was forced to get one for no other reason then free long distance and all the time spent on the road between school and home. At that time I think I only had about 350 minutes a month so I still used my home phone a good deal still for my long distance calls when the 350 was up. My long distance bills were still pretty heafty - even with the cell phone.
Not these days. These days we don't even have a home phone (no reason - we're never home) and I have about a zillion minutes each month for cheaper then I used to pay for my 350. Plus we have free roaming, free nights and weekends, free network to network, and still the free long distance! Times like now this is worth its weight in gold!
My car is broken - yes, again. We believe this time it's the fuel pump or injection or just tiny little elves drunk in my gas tank. But the car is stuck out in Chesterfield (still considered part of "St. Louis metropolitian area" but 30 miles from our house) and won't start at all. Well, we're incredibly fortunate in life in many respects, but right now one in particular stands out - Cody's dad. He's an insanely good mechanic. Not only can he fix anything while looking at it but he can help us fix it OVER THE PHONE! The ability to teach someone else to fix something 800 miles away is quite a skill. When I teach someone something I have to be right there and pointing and demonstrating - that's just how I can do it - but he can tell Cody in such detail what we need to check and what we need to do on a Japanesse car that he's never even dealt with (he hates foreign cars as much as Cody)! So it's a great thing that we have free long distance because we've been using a lot of it trying to gleam some of his genious in order to fix my stupid car! Did I mention I hate my car???