reception!

I just had a 38-minute conversation.  On my cell phone.  At my house -- for the first time in six months!  This is super exciting because I have not been able to use my phone from home ever since we moved back in November!!  I've had terrible service in this house and generally in this neighborhood.  AT&T said I should try using a new SIM card (my old one still said Cingular on it and was probably from my first phone back around 2000..), but that somehow locked me out of the phone I had been using (grrr), so then I tried Musicman and his mom's old phones, but nothing changed.  It was pretty ridiculous for awhile.  Sometimes when I answered the phone we could get a few words in before the connection got crackly, and I'd try to fit in "I'll email you!", which became the main method of correspondence for me.  Eventually I signed up for a service where I can call other people's phones from my Skype account on my laptop, and it links to my number so it looks to them like I'm calling from my cell phone.  The $3/month is bearable, but I figured a long-term solution would involve me eventually getting a new phone.  I didn't want to pay more for the ability to have incoming calls routed to my Skype account so I could actually answer them from my computer as well.  So I haven't been answering my phone at home; I would just open Skype and call them right back.

Tonight, someone called and I decided to answer it for the first time in quite awhile.  I figured I would have a couple seconds to say "let me call you right back" before losing connection, but... it never happened.  Stayed crisp and clear, even when I experimented with walking around the house, which I was sure would drop the call.  Usually the signal bars fluctuate a lot while moving around, rarely staying above two bars.

I'm not sure what changed, but I really hope this sticks, and isn't just a tease!