Thanks for the suggestion, Michael. My wife has a cell phone, but it seems that we're right on the edge of everyone's service boundaries; very poor reception out here in the country.
Bird what about buying a packet of phonecards. My family has moved out of state. So as part of everyones chistmas gift I give them phone cards so we can stay in touch. I just bought a packet of 12 prepaid cards, 120 minutes each (1440 total minutes) for about $50. That works out to about 3.5 cents a minute. I got mine at costco. You can go to www.costco.com and type phone card in the search box.