A fortune in phone cards...

Ohhh boy... this stack of phone cards represents $680, and just a fraction of the money I spent on phone calls to the United States in our long-distance-relationship phase. I'm so glad I didn't add it up at the time – I would've had a nervous breakdown.

The first long-distance phase lasted about a year. We started calling (and emailing and IM-ing) in August of 2000, when I got back from backpacking around Europe, and finished in July 2001 when I left Australia for New Orleans. The second long-distance phase lasted about a year, while I worked for UBC in Vancouver, Canada. I don't know why I kept the stack of phone cards from the first 'phase'... I always had one with me. I'd duck out of work mid-afternoon every day and go down seven floors to the phone booth outside the post office, and call from there. I don't miss those days at all.

Anyway, I stumbled upon these while I was cleaning out boxes from the mezzanine in my parents' shed in Brisbane. Every time the kids come home from overseas, Dad pulls out about 30 large boxes, lines them up, and suggests that we "might want to go through those boxes up there and sort out what you want to keep...". It's a valiant attempt to get random mountains of his grown children's stuff out of his shed, and I'd say it's about, oh, 25% effective. But you have to start somewhere.