what is research?

* being paid for keeping yourself busy all day by thinking about problems?
* assuming that the solution already exists (somewhere in the domain of possibilities, or somewhere else in the world) and therefore has to be re-searched in order to (hopefully) be re-found??
* other proposals?

(I presumably need your help on that one, as - according to this definition - I already missed the chance to ever become a serious researcher in my childhood... (how should I have known that a grandmother's clock should have any significance to my career path ;) )