I waded into this thread today. Long, long day at work, so I felt like I had time to do it justice. Not sure if I read every word of every post, but I did make it to the end.
Your grow is looking good.
And I hear you on giving up the news. I stopped watching 11 1/2 years ago. Biggest single thing you can do to relieve stress. Unless the theme music goes da da da before the broadcast it's not news I care about hearing. I do like to listen to the news readers on the BBC late at night though. No matter how bad the news, it just sounds cool when they read it.