Yesterday was the perfect day, weather wise (mid-60's?), and I didn't have to work. I spent the morning on important phone calls and waiting for the furnace-inspector guy to show up.

After playing in the yard a bit, I went to a local hydroponic gardening store I'd been meaning to visit for over a year. I figured a weekday would be the perfect time to do a reconnaissance mission. What a visit! The front of the store was all boring and respectable... mostly books and chemicals... a few funky water wash growing machine thingies I didn't understand and a whole display of those $150 counter top herb gardens that I see in all the catalogs and suspect of being slightly overpriced... but after talking for a little while, the dude invited me in the back room. (I wish I could insert the right sounding maniacal laugh here... it'd be half Beavis & Butthead and half kid-in-a-candy-shop-for-the-first-time-ever...)

A normal looking back storage room opened to reveal white reflective walls, giant lights going back and forth on rollers, and a sophisticated ebb and flow hydroponics system. A 55 gallon drum fed into a pumping mechanism, and every fifteen minutes, this mechanism fed 12 individual clay pellet filled buckets the nutrient/water mixture... then it emptied them... then it fed them...

The orchids were all in a big happy table, the floor was covered with the happiest looking tomatoes, peppers, and strawberries I've ever seen. Wheels in my head started turning, cogs started clicking, and I would have continued asking questions until some crotchety, cantankerous old customer walked in and started annoying the bejeezus out of me.

Sensing my annoyance, the nice guy took me back to the store front, where he filled my arms with a year's worth of back issues for "Maximum Yield Indoor Gardening," "The Indoor Gardener Magazine," and "The Growing Edge" ... and one of their product catalogs. I made a small purchase and left with the distinct feeling that I had just met a lovely pusher who had given me my first fix free... yet I couldn't wait to do business with him again.

So I've started reading these magazines, and I logged onto my library's inventory network and requested all the hydroponic books in the system to be shipped to my local branch and that they email me when I can pick them up...

Steve just shook his head at me and said "You've found this winter's project, haven't you?" I'm still not sure, but he's probably right. It blends things I know a little about, with things I know nothing about, in an subject area that holds my interest, so there's obvious potential for personal discovery here. Plus, it involves bright lights in the dead of winter...

So.... that's my newest fix of brain candy. That, and the skijoring harness someone promised to give me. Anyone else mulling over interesting new winter activities?