Cell Phones.

The wife and I ordered cellphones. We chose one of T-Mobile's pay-as-you-go plans. For all my misgivings about cell phones, there are two reasons (justifications, rationalizations?) for this choice. First, I feel slightly irresponsible not having one. If I were the sole witness to an accident on a highway, I could little more than provide basic aid and hope that someone else came along who had a cell phone. Two, T-Mobile's plan doesn't have a monthly bill, we just purchase blocks of minutes. In addition I've found that Skype's service that allows one to call regular phones is pretty OK -- there's a delay, but the voice quality isn't bad. Skype has some three dollar per month plan that allows unlimited calling in the US. This would end our need for a land line and hence for ATT since Speakeasy provides DSL service where we live. Most interesting is that what we would pay for Speakeasy, T-Mobile, and a Skype subscription would be considerably cheaper than our ATT bill at the moment.