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