Skyping, the hard but ultimately successful way

I just had a wonderful Skype chat with a book club in Chicago.

Earlier this evening, I'd tried to call our daughter (in Toronto) and my father (in California), bout both calls — on our Internet Vonage line — had been garbled.

I feared that that would be the case for the book club Skype chat, and lo, it was: they could see me, and I could sort of see them, but our voice communication was impossible.

Fall back plan: I called them, and we carried on that way, managing in spite of a still-somewhat-garbled telephone line, together with fuzzy Skype visuals.

In spite of all that, it was a wonderful chat! I love talking to book clubs! 

What I learned: always have a telephone fall-back plan.

Have any of your had success with Skype chats? And when Skype is not connecting, how do you manage?