I have been visiting my parents in Arizona since sometime shortly before Thanksgiving Day.

I'll need to go home soon, at least for a day or so, if only to collect my mail before the USPS sends some of it back to its senders and discards the rest. I would like to come back to be at my parents' home on Christmas Day.

Shortly after I got here, my mother told me that she had an artist's light box that had stopped working and that she had replaced but that she'd been holding on the chance that I'd want to try to repair it. Its fluorescent ballast had failed. I was able to find a replacement unit with the same ratings and form factor at a local Ace Hardware. (The box has used a 15W bulb, the ballast can handle anything from about 14W to about 20W.) Some of the original connections had been made with twist-on wire nuts, so I used these for the extra connections of the repair. The parts came to less that US$10; the actual work on the box took a very few minutes. The restored box is worth about US$200. I offered to return it to my mother, or to trade it to her for the newer box (which lacks a built-in tilt-stand), but my mother insists that I keep it. It will be nice to have.

My brother and his wife now live in the same general area as do my parents, so I have seen a fair amount of them during my visit. Also, one of my cousins (a very nice guy who suffers from some significant cerebral impairment as a result of mishap in utero) has been visiting my mother for the last few days.

Although I've spent a lot of time staring at the computer screen (much as I would be doing if back in Hillcrest), my mother has taken me (sometimes with others) out to see some of the sights.

Although the right sort of job offer would get me to move here, Arizona is very far from what I would consider an ideal place to live. I much prefer the physical geography and most aspects of the culture of the Pacific Northwest along I-5, especially in the area of Portland. (The politics of Portland is to my left, but the politics of Arizona is very much to my right.)