it's about time ...

... that I gave Lisa a gift. She prefers to receive them unexpectedly rather for formal gift-giving situations such as Christmas, anniversaries or even her birthday.

First, a little background: we have had two telephones in the house for a long time. One (an old cordless) rings, can be answered and has caller ID as well as a built-in answering machine - but has been incapable of dialing since it accidentally was put into a half-full coffee cup (instead of its base) a couple of years ago. The other is an old "Princess" handset that can be dialed but hasn't had a working ringer for over a year. We had one phone in the living room and the other at the bedside.

The battery was rapidly dying on the cordless. Since this past weekend, it could be answered but the battery died within 10 seconds. I could have replaced the battery, but why bother doing so in a phone that cannot be dialed?

So, out of the blue (sort of; Lisa's disability and alimony both cleared the bank yesterday), I basically told Lisa that we were going phone shopping. I already knew from online research which two phones were both within our budget ($5 to $30) and adequately functional. We went to K-Mart and found one of the two that I was interested in: the Uniden 1560, a single cordless w/base station, expandable to up to 6 remote handsets. We could have purchased the same phone with one or two remote handsets included, but that will have to wait for another day. We only really need the one for now, and can keep the Princess phone plugged into a jack somewhere in the house as an extension.

I had an almost identical AT&T phone in mind - same price - but they only had that model in stock with extra handsets and that put it out of our range.

Lisa is happy. With all the drama going on with her kids and ex, as well as her work on getting the mortgage and other issues straight, she has been spending a lot of time on those crappy old phones and it has been adding to her frustration.