Fires Still Aren't Fun

The name of this post is a reference to one I did after the house in Guelph burned down, which itself was a reference to one titled "Floods aren't fun" when our basement apartment in Kitchener flooded. In my last update, I alluded to an event where a friend experienced a tragedy "worth being in the news". I'd meant for this update to be dedicated to that, and to use this title for it. However, yesterday something else, and closer to home has happened to earn it.

Happy Friday The 13th!

Just past midnight, I got a text from my brother saying they'd evacuated their apartment as the building's fire alarm had gone off. Them being so close, I sprinted out in my pyjamas to meet them. On the way, I saw the basement garage billowing black smoke, and when I caught up to them, they were standing in front of their lobby, billowing white.

(I should remind everyone at this point, that I'm going to be saying "my brother" and "my mother" a lot. My policy is to not use the individual names of humans on this blog. The one exception is Lee-Anne, based on her express request.)

When the alarm went off, neither of them thought it was a serious thing but felt obliged to follow instructions. Mom is still recovering from her broken leg, so my brother prioritised getting her out safely. But now that things had literally heated up, they were worried about the cats.

Firefighters were signalling people to move back, telling them that they shouldn't be breathing in the smoke. But their apartment is in the back of the building on the first floor, accessible at ground level. My brother and I decided to see if we could find our way there, to see at least if the smoke had made its way in.

There were onlookers but no firefighters. My brother wasn't exactly sure where their cat carriers were, so I ran back to our place and got one. It didn't have its grate in place, but in urgency I grabbed it and ran back, thinking I could put it together once I got back to the site. Unfortunately, I wound up fumbling with it and didn't manage to assemble it. So I abandoned the concept, jumped the railing, and went into the apartment.

The lights were out, so I turned on my phone's flashlight. The inside of the apartment wasn't as bad as the car garage or the lobby, but there was still a smell akin to incense. I found Castor in my brother's window. I grabbed him and told my brother to carry him to mine and Lee-Anne's place.

Pollux was a bit harder. I found him in my brother's closet. At first he seemed lethargic and I worried because in the house fire at Grange, one of the neighbour's cats had initially survived but later died due to smoke inhallation. He, like Castor, reacted to the smoke alarm as we passed under it. I had the impression that both of them had hidden from the noise instead of the smoke, which had unfortunately driven them into smokiest areas.

Holding him tight, I hopped the railing again and made our way to mine and Lee-Anne's place. 

I remember helping my brother and mother adopt Cassidy, and a WALES member do the same. Three years later, both those cats passed within a month of each other, both tragically young. I decided that I would never help another person with the adoption process. When my sister-in-law had barn cats and Lee-Anne felt they were fated to go family, I decided that I wasn't involved and wouldn't take any responsibility for their wellbeing.

Since then their house in Guelph burned down and we took them in. Now I found myself literally running into a burning building to save them.

They're both fine. The firefighters let people back into their apartments at 4:30 am, and they left the balcony door wide open for ventillation. If I'd left them, they would either have been exposed to the smoke an additional four hours, or they would have left the apartment to escape it. Generally, cats will find their way back home, but with the pain caused by the environment, there's no guarantee that they would have.

Mom was looking forward to the time that she would be recovered enough to visit us and see our cats. Well, it appears that necessity is the mother of invention, because we managed to get her down the stairs into our basement apartment.

They're still here. Despite letting everyone back in, the power was lost. Later, the building needed to evacuate the tenants again for repairs. They provided some hotel accomodations but there weren't enough for everybody and they encouraged those who could to stay with friends and family. Hopefully the fees associated with those accomodations incentivise them to resolve this quickly.

Mom's Progress

Mom has been improving steadily. I haven't reported all the stages of her recovery, but she's moved from using a wheelchair exclusively, to being okayed to put 50% pressure on her knee while using a walker. She had the staples in her leg removed, and now she doesn't even have the brace. This past week, she felt comfortable to return the wheelchair. The surgeon says that she no longer needs to book follow up appointments, and she's doing physio several times a week now. She says that she feels pretty confident that she'll be walking by Spring.

I need to make a confession. When I first wrote about this situation, I very loudly and confidently declared that I knew the person that hit my mom. As it turns out, I did not.

I still can't go into full details but I'd like to explain my misunderstanding. On the night that my mother was struck, I ran into two people that I know in the ER. When we received the police report, the person listed as responsible had the same first initial, and the same surname as the person I had seen that night.

I don't know anyone else with that last name! Even after I noticed, it was kind of easy to write off as a mistake from the report. A friend of mine had recently experienced a tragedy worthy of being in the news, and it got a bunch of details wrong. Same thing happened when the house in Guelph burned down. It's always a little distressing to see confirmedly incorrect reporting from supposedly trustworthy sources.

It would make more sense that something wrong happened in the reporting, then that a person with the same last name as the person I know, had hit my mom at the same time and place that the person I know was arriving at that location.

But the ages don't line up, and I've checked license plates which also don't match. I haven't had the heart to confront this person about whether or not there's a connection.

But I still kind of think there is. Another weird detail from that night is that the people I met don't live in the city, and there's a detail in the report that implies the person that hit my mom also doesn't live in the city.

I don't want to spread conspiracy theories but this is all too tantalizing! There are too many things coming together! I might just have to ask the person eventually. I almost can't handle the thought of never figuring it out 

Gmail Shenanigans

In January I went through a stint of daily updates to make my annual quota for posts. One of the topics that seemed a bit more forced was about cleaning my email inbox. Recently, that has become retrospectively more interesting.

In January's update, I said that I had received notice that my inbox was 72% full. This was an account that I'd had since I was a teenager and had made no real effort to maintain. So I didn't take much alarm, knowing that it would be years until I had to worry about it. I did use it as motivation to try cleaning it up, though. By just deleting impersonal messages in the "Social" and "Updates" files, I managed to get it down to 65%.

However, about a week or so ago, I got a notice saying that my inbox was 100% full! It came with a warning that if I didn't free up room in a month's time or buy more space through a subscription, I would be locked out of my account. How was this possible, when less than a month ago I'd dropped it from 72% to 65%?

The data breakdown said that nearly half my space was being used up by Google Photos. So I deleted enough of them to bring it down to 93%

 The next day it was back up to 100%. I wondered if this was a scam by Google to coerce me into buying more space. Maybe this was the AI bubble bursting and, Gemini failing to be profitable after such significant investment, was forcing the company to charge for previously free services.

I considered that my account could have been hacked, but I couldn't find any activity that wasn't my own.

Eventually I figured it out. I have an Android phone, which, like Google and Gmail, is owned by Alphabet. I thought that it was odd that so much of my space was being used by Google Photos even though I hadn't remembered it using a significant amount of space back when I got the 72% notice in January. But when I looked at the photos, they were all ones I'd taken.

I didn't consider this odd because I'm used to my Google accounts being synced. But it turns out that it was replicating the pictures on my phone and uploading it to my Google Photos which has a fraction of the space. So when I deleted images it would just refill itself with whatever remaining pictures that I had which it wasn't able to fit before. I must have accidentally clicked something in my settings at some point.

I managed to deativate this, and now, because I made an additional attempt to clean out my Social and Updates files when I was trying to bring it down from 100%, my inbox is now at 58%

So after like, 20 years of slow, incremental use without any attempt at managing it, in the past two months my inbox has gone: 72% - 65% - 100% - 93% - 100% - 58%

New Year's Resolutions 2026

Last year I resolved to:

• Make 35 posts to The Gryphon's Perch
• Have a total of 50 posts between my main blog and its satelites
• Walk an average of 45 km weekly
• Do strength trainings 2 times per week
• Commit to a 16 hour intermittent fasting schedule
• Seek out experiences that evoke a sense of awe
• Consume more cold media

Let's see how I did:

Make 35 posts to The Gryphon's Perch

Exactly 35, with a string of daily entries crammed into the end of December, but that's not so unusual.

Have a total of 50 posts between my main blog and its satelites

Perch: 35

Gallery: 2 

Reviews: 5 

Gryphood: 30

Total: 72 

2024's total count was 69, so this past year I actually updated a bit more frequently, although not as much to the main blog. This is likely due to creating the WALES cookbook this year. I wanted homemade images for some of the recipes when I wasn't able to get them and to make sure they worked in practice, which gave me inspiration for Gryphood entries. Although I haven't posted there since me and Lee-Anne have been helping out more with meals since Mom broke her leg. It's felt like there's a bit less room to experiment. This coming year, me and Lee-Anne have arranged a monthly hangout with some friends where we each try to make something we haven't before, so hopefully that brings it back a bit. Still an impressive year for food. 

Walk an average of 45 km weekly

I've been increasing this goal by 5 km annually since 2021. Unfortunately, it appears I've reached my natural stopping point, as I only managed a weekly average of 43.5.

Do strength trainings 2 times per week

 I waffled a lot with this, and I was bad with recording when I did it so it's a bit hard to say. Eventually, I made it a goal on my Finch App, which I wrote about on one of my final posts of 2025. I'm going into the New Year using that system to track it.

Commit to a 16 hour intermittent fasting schedule

Waffled with this too. I mentioned last year that this really helps with my ability to sleep and feel rested. I managed to get into this a number of times to the point that I was befitting from it, but had difficulty keeping to it.

Seek out experiences that evoke a sense of awe

I made this in relation to Lee-Anne reading the book Awe. I finished it this year. It's kind of hard to quantify this one. I'm sure I felt some awe.

Consume more cold media

 I read eight books! Otherwise unsure how to measure this.

 Resolutions

I'm going to retain my blogging schedule, with a commited 35 to the Perch, with a total of 50 including the satelites. I'm going to scale back my walking goal to 40 kms as I think that's a good number to push for without being unrealistic. I'm going to renew my attempts at working out twice a week, this time writing a "W" on my physical calendar whenever I do it, similar to how I record my kms. I'll try to get back into an intermittent fasting schedule as well.

I'm going to replace the goal of feeling a sense of awe with getting 50 entries in my Grattitude Jar. In my last post, I mention that I only had 48 this year, 5 less than previous. So I think it's realistic with a bit of a push to manage that, and it's easier to record.

I'll replace my cold media goal with a book count, which is a form of it. I've tried something similar in years gone by without too much success, but I've just got a Goodreads account, and they help track your progress. I've heard studies about the declining rate of book consumption, especially for men, and I'm determined to not contribute to it. I'm beating the average handily, but the next milestone they reference in statistics is people who finish 10 books. I read eight this past year. I'm really tempted to try for two more, but I believe in slow, incremental change, so I'll make my goal nine. I've already finished one.

 Last year, I did two paintings, same as the one before. So perhaps when I'm not focusing on it, I still do it twice. To push myself, I'll resolve to make three paintings.

You can see this year's paintings and last in this Gallery post:

https://gryphonsgallery.blogspot.com/2026/01/paintings-2024-2025.html 

And I would like to try three new recipes. This is a real low bar, as I think I've managed this every year  that my food blog's been active. It should just happen naturally. However, there is a reason to specifically add this. While I have 112 posts on there, I've only personally made 97. Lee-Anne, my mother and brother have the occasional post dedicated to them, and one of them is a second tzatziki recipe, which I'm not counting as it's too similar to my previous. So, I need three more to say I know how to make 100 things. Actually, one of those was "Caring for Cast Iron" which demonstrates food-related knowledge but still isn't a recipe. So I'll commit to four.

In 2026, I resolve to:

• Write 35 posts  for The Gryphon's Perch
• Write 50 total posts including the satelite blogs
• Walk 40 km weekly
• Average 2 workouts weekly
• Commit to an intermittent fasting schedule
• Make 50 entries to my grattitude jar 
• Read 9 books
• Make 3 paintings
• Try 4 more recipes 

Grattitude Jar 2025

In this post, I'll go over the entries I put into my grattitude jar for 2025. This is my third year of doing this. In 2024 I had 73, in 2025 53. This makes sense, as the first time I did it I was including things that are ongoing, like being near the Iron Horse Trail. That doesn't change on an annual basis, but I'm not going to record it twice. However, this year I only had 48, so it looks like I'm declining. Maybe a New Year's Resolution will be to have 50 grattitudes.

I will add context to entries where needed, and I will edit when necessary to maintain confidentiality. This won't be in chronological order. I did make a small effort to date them, but I only tried that partway into the year and I wasn't consistent. I'll try to put entries with similar contexts next to each other, though. 

1. I got to go back to my old neighbourhood in Guelph
2. Got to try shakshouka at Kitchener Market 
3. Got to go to The Boathouse (a restaurant in Victoria Park that closed some years back reopened. Funnily, I also got to go to another Boathouse, in Guelph. That happened same day that I revisited my old neighbourhood)
4. Went to Fresh Grounds Cafe (there was a cool cafe operated by The Working Centre called Queen Street Commons. It closed during the pandemic and despite constant promises to reopen it hasn't. However, they have introduced Fresh Grounds at a different location, which feels like an equivalent)
5. My brother discovered and really loves New City Supermarket and Full Circle Foods 
6. A neighbour got us some hostas and helped us plant them (I mentioned this in a blog post. She had a clay pot with chalk for the community to use. One day me and Lee-Anne saw that it was broken so we replaced it. I guess she's got a camera or something, because she saw our random act of kindness and rewarded use with hostas)
7. Kid at the Downtown Community Centre thought I was an actual gryphon (made a blog post on this. I'd never felt more magical)
8. Finding Warren Greenhouse, a local nursery with a better selection than Walmart 
9. Lots of sunflowers looking promising  
10. Got a harvest of snow peas, a bell pepper, some arugula and parsley from the garden so far 
11. Green bell pepper coming in strong (we would get a few) 
12. Already have 6 sunflower blossoms, a red tomato, & zucchinis looking promising (zucchinis didn't pan out. Otherwise, very successful garden this year)
13. One of the tallest sunflowers has made multiple blossoms after losing its first  (broke a personal record for sunflowers, apparently didn't record a grattitude for it)
14. Getting dividers for my Gryphood binder 
15. Upgrading my Gryphood binders with page protectors,  double-sided colour pages, and a new binder (eventually made a second binder, one for Main Courses, the other for Snacks and Sides)
16. Got to make my WALES Cookbook 1st Addition. Got 18 recipes from members, 20 members participating 
17. I finally made the buckwheat chocolate groat squares, and they were pretty good (recipe and groats attained by a neighbour of my grandparents)
18. Finding three more Peter Wohlleben books at Conestoga Mall's Indigo (Guy who wrote Hidden Life of Trees. I've since read The Weather Detective. It was good, but not at the same level. I've written about it on my Reviews blog)
19. Facilitating a bread baking workshop at WEAFY Day (company event. One of the facilitators had to back out because of an emergency, so we needed to come up with a new workshop and I stepped in)
20. Meeting an old neighbour at the train station after missing them while dropping by their old place. The son spoke a full sentence (The son was previously not able to speak full sentences, so this was a positive surprise)
21. I found my old boss' turkey recipe from 2020 and made it again
22. Mom finally went to the doctor and she could have been in worse shape (she was diagnosed diabetic like myself, but it makes more sense for her age. She isn't in as bad shape as I was, and a little medication has done wonders)
23. Learned how to use puff pastry
24. Lee-Anne got an interview as a medical social worker (she didn't get the job)
25. Central had their good roast beef deli meat
26. Hearing a hawk's cry on the Iron Horse Trail (this is the only one I don't remember)
27. Learning about Goblincore
28. Getting the Finch App
29. My YouTube algorhithm giving me small-time YouTubers after my 1000th blog post (I figure this is because I read 999 posts of my own blog. It's owned by Alphabet, as is Youtube, so my algorhithm must have thought, correctly, that I enjoy small-scale introspective creators)
30. Lee-Anne and her brother got to say goodbye to their grandmother
31. Seeing someone that I used to support on the ION and telling her about our wedding
32. Lee-Anne made it through her surgery okay
33. Going to Wordsworth Books
34. Getting to use the Park Place Pool (a perk of my mother and brother moving into the building nearby. We get access to the amenities)
35. Mom was next to a hospital when she was hit by a car
36.  Only mom's shin was broken in the accident, was otherwise okay 
37. Mom lives on the first floor of an apartment building and only a 3 minute walk from our place as she recovers (she got hit by a car and broke her shin this year) 
38. Mom's health has improved since starting medication 
39. Dropped my blood sugar by 0.2 (after some stagnancy, it was nice to see improvement. Unfortunately, I would later backslide a bit)
40. Getting back into painting with the Crow Magician (made it for a coworker that kept getting The Magician in tarot readings) 
41. My coworker saying that my Crow Magician is the best thing that anyone has ever made for her
42. A stranger telling me that she loves my painting as I brought it to WALES
43. Someone at Walk or Wheel said my whale painting is majestic 
44. A person at the Central Artwalk recognized Lee-Anne and gave her Girlguide Cookies (we ran into someone selling them last year at a different art walk. She was selling them but ran out. She took Lee-Anne's number but never got back to her. Apparently she wasn't able to get them again. This year she noticed us and made sure we got our cookies)
45. My mother and brother visited four locations for the Central Art Walk
46. Lee-Anne tried going to the Breakfast Club at Community Healthcaring and enjoyed it. She's signed up to volunteer
47. Saw a coyote for the first time
48. Running into someone from the Summer Program again

Things I Forgot to Mention

Sometimes when I'm writing a post, I'll forget some detail that I wanted to mention. Or something noteworthy will happen that I wanted to share here, but I didn't think it would generate enough discussion to. Here, I'm going to go over a list of some of these topics that I thought were interesting but got by me.

Continually Weird Weather

I talked about how this past November was the snowiest it's been in 75 years, but we had a flash frost right before Christmas followed by a Boxing Day blizzard. Well, as I was typing that, I was unaware that we were experiencing another flash frost, which would be followed by another blizzard. It's like a different season every day here.

 

 

 

 Trees encased in ice from the flash thaw/freeze. Dangerous, but somehow pretty.

 

The very next day, everything is covered again.

Leaves on the Snow 

Following this theme, the first snowfall of the season hit us hard and suddenly. So much so that it took the trees by surprise. I noticed that there were leaves on the snow. A rare phenomenon, since usually most of them have fallen and get blanketed at the change of the season.

Falalalocal

In Kitchener, we've seen the development of a lot of high-rise condo buildings. A frequent commonality is that their first floor usually has some dedicated commercial space to host businesses. I don't think any of the newer places has managed any though, which creates kind of a bleak, liminal feel.

Well, recently, the self-titled "Bright Building" opened up it's space to a temporary store. We didn't get around to visiting it, but today noticed that it was still open. So we dropped by.

The sign in the front said "Falalalocal", but on the inside it's apparently known as KWFamous. Bunch of stuff from local artists, including product from some of the vendors that I regretted not buying from at Christkindl market. I got my clay pot and a book of paintings of nostalgic Kitchener locations. I still need a wooden yo-yo.

Weird QR Code Video 

A different condo building, called Station Park, had a big QR code on it that connected to a video. I scanned it and basically it brought me to a commercial. It was a weird one though. A guy riding the Go Train was heading into Kitchener, texting a friend about why he should invest. The background music was really intense like an action movie. The person in the video never smiled. In his conversation, he mentioned the projected housing disparity and increases in rent as if it were a positive. The video cut to atmospheric scenes that I would usually consider happy, such as Kitchener Market and Victoria Park, but it was still playing that intense music as if it were some dystopian reality, clipping back to the same unsmiling man. I guess this is how investors like to see themselves and the world. 

Saw a Coyote

Just last week, when I was in Brampton, I was in a car with Lee-Anne and her parents and a coyote ran across the street. It was my first time ever seeing one. I've heard people report sightings in Brampton and Guelph. Still none in Waterloo Region yet, but I think they're coming.

I picture coyotes as being small and mangey, but this one was about as big as a meium-sized dog and quite majestic. I know I shouldn't be happy to see one, but I was. 

Cats Reunited

When me and Lee-Anne were in Kenabeek, my mother and brother brought their cats over for a visit. I think their building was testing alarms or something, and they wanted to get them away from the noise. 

We have two cats of our own, and when the fire happened, for a time all four had to share space in our basement apartment. There was always a curiosity about whether the two sets would remember each other, and it turns out they did. Probably the fact that the humans of each household visit each others space frequently causes us to treck over some scent, keeping the cats aware of each other.

Met MJ's Owner

In a post about local outdoor cats, I mentioned a particularly sociable one named MJ. We knew his name from an encounter with his owner. We asked the cat's name, but forgot to enquire about the human's. Well, we ran into him again and finally learned. For confidentiality, I will not repeat it on this blog.

Intermittent Fasting

I could probably hold off and just talk about this on my New Year's Resolution post, but I tried intermittent fasting this year. Basically, I would skip breakfast and not have anything after dinner. The main takeaway I got from the experience was surprising, and not one I'd heard anyone mention before. 

A few days into it, I woke up one morning feeling refreshed, having slept better than I'd had in years. The next night was also phenomenal. On the third, I had to reflect and think if I'd been doing anything differently. It was the fasting.

I've since fallen off and on, but everytime, on about the third night of fasting my sleep gets exponentially better. Hasn't done much for my weight. 

Bowl

I might have mentioned that, during our wedding shower we were supposed to get a wooden salad bowl from a guy that I'd bought from before. It couldn't be done in time for the event, and wound up getting postponed over and over again. Well, we finally got it. Not super recently, I kind of forget when that happened, but this was on my list of things to talk about. I bought some charcuterie boards from him at the last Frederick Art Walk. 

Finch Report

I've been aware of something called the Finch App for some time. It's a self-care tool that is friendly to, but not exclusively for, neurodivergent people. I resisted downloading it for some time because the first person that pitched it to me described it in kind of a creepy way. But on January 31 of this year I took the plunge and gave it a try.

Basically, you hatch a cartoon finch that becomes your companion. You get to name it and choose its colours. I made mine purple and named it Phoenix, as it stuck with the mythological theming of my own name, and because it's avian in nature.

The game gives you some self-care goals and as you complete them, you earn Rainbow Stones. With these you can buy things like clothes and furniture. You also earn Energy which, if you get enough of it, sends your Finch on an adventure. This gets you a bonus item and an experience which can build your Finch's personality.

The goals are customizable. There are a bunch of other cool features, such as a mood map that if you fill, it tells you what times of day you feel most happy or motivated. I was surprised to learn that I feel best on Mondays and worst on Fridays. I would have guessed much differently, but it turns out that I start every week with optimism and by the end, I'm used up.

You can share goals with friends, which adds a bit of soft pressure. Lee-Anne has downloaded it as well, and we share an exercise goal, for example.

You can select a special goal that will hatch a Micropet for your Finch if you do it enough times. Right now mine is about working on hobbies. Blogging counts.

Basically, it game-ifies some of the more mundane elements of life that are difficult to focus on. It creates the sense that you are doing it for someone else, as it can be difficult to perceive delayed gratification as being for oneself, and it gives a sense of chronology to improvement. I might write a longer review at some point, but I wanted to make this update about my first annual Finch Report. It just gave me a list of my accomplishments this year.

January 31 - Hatched Phoenix

Took care of self for 334 days

I think it counts a successful self-care day as when you complete enough goals to send your Finch on an adventure. I think I managed it every day. It's almost a little weird that I was able to get enough of a signal at my grandparents place on the Canadian Shield to keep my streak going.

It counted these as my three most frequently completed tasks: 

Take Meds - 308 times

I have "Take Meds" as something that needs to happen twice a day to count as complete. So I think most of the days that are missed, I still remembered once. I found that if I were eating somewhere other than home, it made it easier to forget my second dose. Apparently this happened 26 times.

Put on Deodorant - 218 times 

I'm thinking of getting rid of this goal. I have a "Brush Teeth" one that I need to complete twice to get credit. I might merge the two, as they kind of go together and I wouldn't remember one and forget the other. The issue with this is that while I brush my teeth twice I only apply deodorant once.  But I think I could just use common sense.

I'm surprised that I supposedly forgot to apply deodorant 116 times. Potentially, I just forgot to tell the app that I did it. 

Make Coffee - 214 times

I usually make coffee before I leave for work. I get up a little before Lee-Anne, so I make enough for her as well. I don't always do it on the weekends, as there's a chance that she gets up first, or else this number would be higher.

3 Self-Kindness Goals Completed

This was a function that the app tried and at least for me, didn't really take off. They suggested separating your goals into categories, one of which was Self-Kindness. They pushed it for about a week, and I checked it three times I guess, but otherwise didn't pay much attention to this feature.

I definitely have goals that involve self-kindness. I just don't bother to put them into categories so they aren't counted here. 

20 Locations Visited

When you send your Finch on adventures, you can choose to book a plane ticket to different parts of the world. Some of the items that randomly show up in shops will be specific to your location. It also sometimes impacts the interactions you have with your Finch at the end of their adventures. 

Every day that you complete earns 2% of exploration wherever you happen to be. Despite having visited 20 locations, I'm not at 100% for any of them. I simply don't have the patience to stay in one place for that long. Since plane tickets cost Rainbow Stones, I think it's more frugal to complete one location before moving on. 

But I don't think the game is meant to be beaten (which is a good thing), so unless you keep traveling, they will likely continue to add places faster than you can finish them. I would like to eventually have at least started each option.

599 Items Collected

I mentioned it earlier, but these are either clothing items or furniture options for your "bird nest". Phoenix has a bit of a wizard theme, and he lives in a treehouse. 

453 Good Vibes Shared

There is a friending system, and you can send preset positive messages to them, such as a High-Five, Comfort, Water, Encouragement etc. You get a bit of energy for a Good Vibe once per friend per day. I mentioned that Lee-Anne is on Finch. So is my mother and brother, and some of my coworkers.

Though, the person I sent the most Good Vibes to is someone I don't know. At one point, they gave us the option to adopt a friend that didn't have any. The person I got from that is who I've exchanged the most Good Vibes with.