Oh yeah, I’m good; and I’m not just talking about my last-minute, three-day long tech support trip to Fabulous Orange County — wherein a woman spontaneously knelt at my feet and kissed my hand…

Today I returned someone’s lost cell phone.

Last night, ’round midnight, after the late showing of “The Terminal” at the local multi-plex, I found a cell phone lying in pieces in the parking space next to my car. I put the battery back in and the phone still worked so I decided to take it with me and track down the owner.

Since it didn’t have a security code I had no problem ransacking the call logs for phone numbers (it didn’t have any other stored names and numbers). I called my cell phone to get the phone number and tried doing a reverse lookup to get the name, but cell phone numbers aren’t in the regular reverse directory, apparently. I called the lost phone’s number and got the owner’s first name from the voice mail greeting. I was able to reverse lookup several of the numbers in the call logs so I had names, addresses, and phone numbers for about 10 people.

Her home phone number was unlisted so I couldn’t tell at the time that one of the numbers was her home phone. There were three entries with the same last name so I figured, somewhat incorrectly, that they were her relatives. This afternoon I called the “relative” that had been called the most and it turned out to be her boyfriend’s mother. From that call I got her full name, her boyfriend’s name, her home phone number, and the fact that they were going out to the park today so they probably wouldn’t be home for a while.

Yahtzee.

I left a message on her home phone and decided to try a couple of the unknown numbers too. By sheer coincidence the first unlisted/cell phone number I called was her boyfriend’s phone (his old home phone number was in the phone but no longer in service) so I left a message there too. Hours later she returned the call and came over to pick up her phone. I was offered, and I politely refused to accept, a reward for returning the phone.

A detective job well done. Hazzah.

The funny thing was that she didn’t even know that she’d lost the phone until she got my message saying I’d found it.