Found a Ring

One time, before the more recent fire, I was walking over to my mother and brother's place when something caught my eye. I was on my own, it had begun to rain and wind whipped around me. It was dark out and I was walking alongside the bottom of a hill, next to the closed swimming pool. Something shiny glittered from the shadows.

I stepped off my path to inspect this interruption of the night. Pawing through the mud, I extracted what looked like a wedding band.

I wasn't sure what to do. Perhaps someone would realize they had lost it and return. But it wouldn't make sense to wait, exposed to the inhospitable elements under such uncertain terms. There was nowhere to leave it that would be visible yet near to where it was lost.

Looking closer, it appeared to have some kind of inscription. Very difficult to discern under the low light, I nevertheless felt it was somehow familiar. I walked further and beneath a streetlamp confirmed my suspicions. Elvish.

It was the One Ring to Rule Them All.

Of course it wasn't actually. After the success of the movies, it had been an obvious merchandising opportunity to make replicas of the One Ring. You could tell it wasn't real because if it was it would only show Elvish script after being exposed to fire.

But the way I found it felt very cinematic. The One Ring is supposed to find its way back to its master, the Dark Lord Sauron by attracting the attention of people who would wish to possess it. By inducing feelings of greed and power lust, its bearers inevitably fall to ill fortune and so it cannot be truly possessed. In this way it moves from hand to hand until reaching its intended destination.

So here I was, fighting through a bitter storm, and somehow, half-submerged in mud it shot a small glimmer of light at me. Despite the subtlety of the gesture and the discomfort caused by pursuing it, somehow I felt compelled to find the small object.

I like to imagine that someone bought a lot of One Ring replicas and left them in various places where they would feel epic to find.

Or maybe it's the actual article and the person that would commit the arson was attempting to reclaim it.

Maybe he had somehow carried the flames of Mount Doom, the only substance capable of melting its material, and he was actually some manner of hero attempting to prevent the Dark Lord from rising once again.

Anyway, I keep it on my keychain now. I did have someone growl "My preciousssss" at me since then. Someone who shouldn't have known what I had in my pocket, quite oddly. 

The Move is Done

The cleaners made good on their offer to move my family's stuff to the new location. Seeing the pile of non-recoverable items at the old unit made it feel like they weren't going to get much back, but seeing the huge display of boxes at the new place made me wonder what they left behind.

The packing was done in a much neater, more consistent and thorough way than how we did it after the first fire. Much of the bulk of  the moved items turned out to be boxes and packing paper. Once we cleared that out, it looked much less daunting.

Most of the boxes were labeled. One of them had a drawing of a book instead of the word "books". I guess one of the movers had an artistic streak, or it might have been a way to break up the tedium of the day. 

We did indeed retrieve mine and my aunts' paintings unharmed. The only exception was a still life that I'd done of four bell peppers, but that one had less sentimental value than most. I even have a second one in the same theme.

We also lost a print of some birch trees from all the way back at the place I lived five years ago. No one was attached to it though. I got it from a thrift store along with some other random images I thought were vaguely nice. Lee-Anne didn't feel the same and got me to leave behind most of my thrift store art when we moved to where we're at now. The birch trees were just nice enough to get a pass.

But when we got some nicer and more personalized decorations, the print got tucked away. When my family moved to the old apartment, we gave it to them as a house warming gift. After some time, my mother complained that it looked too much like hotel art, and so it got put in their walk-in closet.

When I visited the apartment for the first time after the fire, I thought that the taken items were considered non-recoverable, or at least under consideration, while the stuff still in the unit was intended to be cleaned. I found the birch tree print, but none of the other paintings, which made me think it was the sole survivor. It became a bit of a joke that this piece was immortal, despite no one really wanting it. However, I misunderstood how they were handling things, and it turns out that it's the only wall hanging (other than my bell peppers) that isn't going to make it. That's fine.

They got back most of their cookwear, books, clothing, and hard-surface furniture like bookshelves, tables, and dining room chairs.  For some reason, the cleaners packed an empty pickle jar. I guess they don't know what might have sentimental value.

I found a bunch of old college textbooks and a notebook from Katimavik that I'd never seen at their previous place. They had some stuff that never got unpacked after the first fire, and I guess they were included in that. 

Their place is looking mostly complete. All they're missing is some soft furniture. We requested the couch and arm chair from Lee-Anne's grandmother's. It would just be a shame to lose them since they're older than my mom and they would have survived such a short amount of time after leaving the farmhouse. At one point it was said that they would do their best to clean them and then send them our way, but they've been quiet on the follow up and since they've already done one move, they might not want to make another.

Since they had renters' insurance, they received a cheque to cover the inconvenience of relocating. They'll get another to refund the items that can't be recovered.

Back to Normal

My mother and brother have moved out. I'm not going to give any indication as to where, juuust in case an arsonist is reading this. I doubt it, but after two fires in under a year and a half, despite the causes being quite different and the culprit in the second case being caught, you just can't be too sure. I've never shared an address on here while the person referenced is residing there, but I did give some descriptions of their circumstance relative to us.

They were motivated to move when it was announced that the estimated timeframe for people returning to their units was increased from 3-4 weeks to three months. Just two days ago, because I'm still on their mailing list until the end of April, this was updated to six months from the time of their message. So, including the two that had already passed, this would mean returning a total of eight months after the fire.

Apparently they had people requiring emergency accomodations living in seven different hotels. Now, for those willing to wait to return, they have partnered with another rental agency to take in people for the estimated half-year until their homes are habitable again. Those that are okay with moving will be given priority for properties owned by the company. For people staying with friends and family, they have frozen rent, and people still bound to a lease have been given permission to terminate it early.

So they're being mostly responsible about it all. It's interesting though, I feel like some of the new condo buildings have sprung up in a shorter time period than the estimate for restoration. Lee-Anne said that sometimes, it's cheaper and less labour intensive to destroy a place and build from the ground up. Of course, that's less of an option considering we're talking about people's homes, and Park Place cares at least about its reputation.

I'm happy to update that the paintings I was worried about were declared recoverable, so we should be getting those back. The couch and chair from Lee-Anne's grandmother's were not so lucky, which was the case for most of the furniture. However, the cleaning company said that they can still do their best and then return them. The declaration of "non-recoverable" is mostly to give the owner an option of getting refunded under tenant's insurance.

Although I feel like getting the furniture back might be a little bit more difficult than originally anticipated. We had pretty free access to the unit for awhile, until their hallway got blocked off for removal of asbestos. The people doing that were different than the cleaners, and during that time they bagged up all the non-recoverables in a giant pile. This means we lost our ability to survey the items in the apartment and since then, we've received some emails asking for permission to throw everything out.

I get the impression that someone felt freer to offer us our stuff before it was all bagged, but the asbestos thing has since made it inconvenient to retrieve items. I think they may be legally required to do so though, as they are still asking permission. But without access to the unit, and without being offered a list of what they want to throw out, it's hard to make decisions. My brother has still requested a few items.

To give the cleaners credit, they have offered to do us the great convenience of delivering their items to the new location. This would relieve us of the need to make moving plans. 

My brother moved out first. Mom stuck around with us a little while longer until they could get a bedframe at the new place. This is because her leg is still a little messed up due to breaking it last year. Even having one less person was a relief, as it freed up a room.

Probably my greatest feelings of depression about the situation would spark  in the mornings, while drinking my cup of coffee. It being a time of year when the sun was slow to rise, our apartment would be cast in darkness when I got up for work in the mornings. With someone sleeping in every room, I would have no choice but to return to bed, drinking my coffee in the dark with Lee-Anne sleeping next to me. After my brother left, I was able to go to the room he was staying in and have my beverage with the lights on.

 The cats moved on the same day that my mother did. It's hard to tell how they feel about everything.

Friday the 13th Again

Because February is the only month that is exactly four weeks (except on leap years), this means that all the dates in March are the same except the last three. So the only way to have two Friday the 13s in a row is for the first one to be in February. Which it was this year, same day as the fire.

Yesterday was our second, marking one month since it happened. The weather suited the occasion. After three days of warmth, we were hit by a blizzard. I didn't bring boots or a coat to work because it looked innocent enough when I left.

This was also the last day to fit within the building's original estimate of three to four weeks before residents could move back in. 

The bad luck came, although not as dramatically as last time. We received an update to their estimate saying that it would actually be about three months. Whether that is counting from the event, or from now, was unclear.

My brother's birthday was on the 12th, and that day some people came to clean and deodorize the items still in the apartment. Unfortunately, a few things were considered unrecoverable. Among these were a computer chair and some bar stools. The latter is a little disappointing, as Lee-Anne and I got them new as a housewarming gift for them. They'll be compensated for it by their tenant's insurance, but still.

There were also a list of things considered under review. Among these were some of my paintings. Specifically these ones:

 

It's too bad, as these are sentimental and difficult to replace. They also survived the first fire, which hurts to see them lost in a second one. If they are, we don't know yet.

Lee-Anne and I visited the apartment today. Her family had given my mother and brother a couch and arm chair from the home of Lee-Anne's then recently-deceased grandmother. Those pieces of furniture were sturdy and likely older than my mom. There was no indication whether or not they were considered recoverable.

One funny thing I noticed was that the worker's actually used their whiteboard. To write some series of numbers that I don't know the meaning of. Lee-Anne drew the face of a cat next to it.

Behind a mattress that was set against a wall, I found a piece of paper with a note that just said "NO!". 

A collage of family photos had its frame cracked.

We rescued my brother's cactus and brought it back to our place. It's only just due to be watered and looks no worse for wear. 

They Found the Arsonist

The person that caused the fire at my mother and brother's building has been caught. Here's an article.  

https://kitchener.citynews.ca/2026/02/26/arson-charges-laid-for-fire-at-kitchener-apartment-building/

They didn't release a name, but we know it was a 32 year old man. They did include a potentially non-exhaustive list of charges put against him. Most of them seem what you would expect of an arsonist, ie, use of a disguise and tools, disregard for human life etc. The only somewhat interesting detail in there is that he broke probation, meaning that he's likely a repeat offender.

When something like this happens, you always want to know why the person did it. Was it simply for the sensation of creating a huge fire? Was it to impact a large number of people? Was it targeted toward someone in the building, or the company that runs it? We'll likely never find out.

Here's another article, from before he was caught. This one includes a photo of him on the night of the event. I wanted to post the pic directly on here, but I think they protected the image somehow.

 https://www.ctvnews.ca/kitchener/article/police-release-photo-of-person-tied-to-fire-at-kitchener-apartment-building/

 In my initial post on the topic, I mentioned the coincidence of it happening on Friday the 13th. At the time, the fire was considered non-suspicious. Now that we know it was arson, I can't help but think there may have been a bit of human intentionality on choosing that specific date.

The building has been sending us regular updates. Their present estimate is that it will take one or two more weeks before people can move back in. However, that might not be the case for my family, as they said that part of their restoration process is going to include removing pieces of the bathroom and kitchen, including the shower and cabinetry. This is only the case for people living on the first floor, which is where their apartment is.

We have been able to go into the apartment. In the emails, they said we would be able to go in for "supervised visits" which made me think that we would be monitored by staff. But you can just go, sign in and say what unit you're visiting and you can take your time. You just can't hang out or sleep there.

We've been able to get some stuff, like a folding mattress for my brother that he has from the last time he needed to stay with us due to a fire. He was just over, clearing out the bathroom and kitchen as per reccomendation from the building, so that they can do what they need next week. 

Fortunately, one of the requirements for tenancy was renter's insurance. Despite the fact that they didn't need to be provided housing, they're still getting $50 for every day that they're not in the unit. They're also getting reimbursed for the food that needed to be thrown out due to the refrigerators power being cut.

Every tenant is required to have all of their possessions cleaned. They will let us know when they go to our unit, and they encourage one of the resident's to be present while it happens. They're going about this in a relatively respectful way, but it still feels invasive. 

They have a rule against smoking in the building. This fire was like the ultimate chain smoker. 

Year of the Fire Horse

This past February 17 was Lunar New Year, transitioning from the Year of the Wood Snake to that of the Fire Horse. The Chinese Zodiac includes 12 animals and 5 elements. My mother turned 60 in 2025 which means that, for the first time since she was born, it was her animal-element combination. This should have brought great fortune, and things were going pretty well for her, until she got hit by a car, broke her leg, and got chased out of her home due to fire for the second time in a year and a half.

When I was young, maybe around ten, I had this book of Astrology which merged the Western and Eastern variants. In it, it said that the Year of the Fire Horse was considered to be the most intimidating of the 60 combinations. Apparently this was true to the point that people in China would avoid having children during this time, as those offspring would be fated either to greatness or destruction. While the Fire Horse isn't necessarily bad, it tends to evoke a sense of fear moreso than opportunity.

Considering the hardships that my family has undergone and the current state of the world, I would prefer a calm and boring year to a dynamic, high-energy one. 

Here is an article with some details on the fire that occured in my mother and brother's building:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/kitchener/article/suspicious-fire-set-in-kitchener-parking-garage-police/

In my last update, the incident was considered "not suspicious". However, since then the fire department has conducted an invesitgation and now the most likely cause is thought to be arson. The building is now conducting repairs and clearing out smoke. The damage was more advanced than their previous estimate, and so they're thinking it will be another three to four weeks before residents can move back in.

This building has operated in a much more thoughtful way than the place in Guelph did. They've provided hotel rooms to anyone that wasn't able to stay with friends of family. Now that things are looking to take a little longer than expected, they have upgrading those people to rooms with full kitchen facilities.

Apparently even though the apartments were not considered habitable by humans, they allowed people to keep their pets there. Although now they are saying that people need to find alternative sheltering options for them as they go through the units to clean them individually.

The building advertises itself as pet-friendly. When everyone evacuated, I saw many dogs and cats. I have to wonder what it looked like when they opened up the Social Room in a neighbouring building to shelter the tenants in the wake of the fire. It must have been a zoo in there. I have to imagine that the chances of some animals reacting poorly to each other was high.

Apparently all humans escaped the building in relatively good health. There were two injuries and one person was hospitalized, but is now fine. I wonder if all the pets were similarly fortunate. Articles have not mentioned this, unlike the fire in Guelph, where they did report on the two cat fatalities between the eight living there.

Since the incident, it has occurred to me that there was an additional layer of awkwardness to the situation which thankfully didn't manifest. You might remember that, a few years ago I facilitated de-escalation training to all the firefighters in Kitchener. The chances of them coming in while I was saving the cats, and needing to implement the same training I'd provided for them, on me now in a state of escalation, was non-zero.

It's tough because in neither incident were my mother or brother in any way at fault. They didn't install the air conditioner that exploded on the house in Guelph, and they didn't light the car on fire at their current location. This is gratifying on a moral level, but on the other side of things, it means that there's nothing really to learn and therefor, no way to prevent it from happening again. One might say that the same thing happening to them again is highly unlikely, but when lightning has already struck twice, it seems less improbable. Besides, if we're looking at my network as a whole, this is the third strike. I'll tell that story in a future post.

The first time, they were staying in a low-rent location that was independently owned and poorly maintained. But now they were living in a fairly professional location and it still happened. 

It's difficult to reconcile oneself with the fact that, every night when you fall asleep, you are relying on everyone choosing not to light your house on fire. Because anyone can do it, and there's nothing you can do to prepare. It's hard not to imagine how it would be more difficult to escort my mother with her still-faulty leg up a flight of stairs to get outside, and to evacuate four cats instead of just two. 

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. 

Deleting Emails

Since it's the end of the year and I want to fulfill my 35 post annual quota to this blog, I'm likely going to be posting daily until the New Year. 

Recently I got a notice from Google saying that I've used up 72% of the space alotted to my free account. Looking into it, this is divided between my Drive, Photos, Gmail, and Other. Since then, I've lowered it to 64% just by deleting emails.

This isn't so disturbing. I've had the same address since I was a teenager, so even if I neglected to react to the issue entirely, I should still have a number of years before I have to worry about this. Still, it's recently become a project of mine to see if I can lower it to less than 50%

Gmail has an automatic system filtering messages into categories. Much of the useless content appears to be stored between Social, Updates, and Promotions. Because it defaults to showing me my base Inbox and there is precious little of interest in these other sections, it's been pretty easy to neglect.

At first I just moved through them in chronological order, selecting one-by-one which emails I wanted to delete. I'm a bit of a hoarder, so I did want to retain anything with a semblance of sentimental value. But I noticed that some sources sent very reliably unnoteable messages. So by searching these, I've been able to delete in clusters of 50 at a time. I'll describe some of these here. 

Pizza Nova: I used to go here for a slice now and again for the short period that I was enrolled at University of Waterloo. I subscribed to their newsletter in return for access to their WiFi. This was a bit more critical back when Data was more expensive.

It turns out that if you hit the "Unsubscribe" button provided by Gmail, it  doesn't actually complete the command. Instead, it sends a request on your behalf to the site in question. Pizza Nova has not been complient with this, so even though I was able to delete a large bank of messages, I continue to get a steady stream of them.

Twitter:  I created an account on this platform back when it was the rising star of social media, when it was attempting to be a viable alternative to Facebook. This place was always the worst, even before Musk got his hooks in it. I remember thinking that it was like Facebook, except restricted to just being the status update function. This meant that there was no opportunity to add nuance to discussion or commentary, forcing everything to be reduced to pithy one-liners. I noticed that it brought out the worst in me, causing my more intrusive thoughts to flow to the screen. 

I was disturbed that people paid more attention to my account there than to my blogs. I'm not sure if that was a more realistic expectation at that time, but it certainly isn't now. 

I blocked my account and it has been left sitting vacant since my teenage years. I've only logged in to vote on a poll on the Pokemon Go account. 

Of course, Twitter has since been bought by Elon Musk and semi-rebranded to X, somehow mutating into something even worse. After the takeover, it was announced that all inactive accounts would be deleted. This was the one thing I was grateful to Musk for, but I keep getting emails saying that someone is trying to hack my account. So either those are a product of a phishing scam, or there wasn't any follow through. I haven't bothered to look into it.

At one point, Twitter was sending out individual emails everytime someone that you were subscribed to Tweeted. I deleted them all.

FaceBook: I was a little more discerning with this one. I deleted everything that wasn't targeted to me. This means that I kept all the notices of messages and comments related to my account. I probably don't need all of those, but there's still so much to get rid of that I wanted to see if I could lower my storage beneath 50% while only getting rid of things fully detatched from myself.

I made an exception for some messages from the Social Work group where they were talking about a classmate that had passed tragically young. I kept those.

Plenty of Fish and OKCupid: These are the two dating sites I used back in college. I remember thinking that the women at Plenty of Fish were boring compared to those that frequented OKCupid. They would totally lean on you to maintain conversation and only respond in single sentences that were difficult to build off. This is retrospectively funny because Lee-Anne has informed me that, oblivious to myself, this was actually a Christian dating site. So my criticisms became more targeted.

I don't know the fate of either of these platforms. Nowadays I hear about Tinder, Bumbl, and... Maybe those are the only two I can name. Obviously these systems have no use to me now. 

Qora: This is a question-and-answer site akin to Yahoo Answers or a worse version of Reddit.  It's kind of difficult to discern if the place is active, or if it's mostly haunted by AI. Like Pizza Nova, despite having very little impact on my life, it sends a disproportionately high number of emails and has made it difficult to unsubscribe.

LinkedIn: This place is pretty bad for sending unnecessary emails. I did however get an article suggestion from them that caught my eye. It was called "Is AI The Worst Mistake In Human History?" In fact, the link is still active. If you're interested, here it is: 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-worst-mistake-human-history-john-battelle?trk=eml-b2_content_ecosystem_digest-hero-14-null&midToken=AQHyOMv0mXNbGQ&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=3XpAjxR-ax2s41 

It's easy to think of this technology as only making an impact from the year 2022 onward, but this was written in 2016.

The title references a quote from Stephen Hawking, in which he said that AI would be the last human invention. In the article, it frames Google and Facebook as these evil mega-corporations that have been hoarding the technology from the common person. In contrast, it speaks to an up-and-coming group called OpenAI, comprised of individuals such as Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who want to open it up to the world.

This is an interesting perspective in reflection, since now we know now that OpenAI would release ChatGPT, the forerunning system that would force Google and Facebook (actually Alphabet and Meta) to open their technology to the public in response. Yes, in a sense this has empowered the common person, but it has also created a ton of opportunity to scrape information from people, it has enabled and almost necessitated widescale plagiarism in schools, acted as a tool for the spread of propaganda, eroded career paths, and has created deep environmental concerns due to the amount of water needed for their cooling systems. If I'm being charitable, the best you can say about it is that it's been a double-edged sword.

Christmas 2025

This year, Ontario got hit by winter real hard. In fact, statistically the last time we had a November this snowy was 75 years ago. Weirdly, this didn't guarantee a white Christmas, as we sprung up to below freezing temperatures for a few days. It wasn't enough to melt everything, but the buildup was a little less dramatic than anticipated.

Traditionally, me and Lee-Anne go up to Brampton for her family's celebration on Boxing Day, which we upheld this year. Before leaving, we had a kind of Christmassy dinner with my mother and brother. I made fried ham, scalloped potatoes, and Brussels sprouts. The situation with mom's temporary loss of mobility has given an opportunity for me, Lee-Anne, and my brother to showcase our culinary skills. We've been meal planning together and rotating dinner duties between the three of us.

A couple weeks ago, Mom even volunteered to take a turn once per week doing something simple, as she's been feeling well enough for it. Her mobility has been gradually and steadily improving.  She can get around the house and onto the patio using a walker. She's been able to shower with a shower chair, and was proud to be able to change her bedsheets on her own. She's allowed to bend her knee now, and put a little bit of pressure on it.

This family unit didn't do a gift exchange this year. Necessity has had us showing good will to one another regularly, so if felt redundant.

Me and Lee-Anne left for Brampton on the 24th. They don't do their main celebration on Christmas Day, but they do have a family breakfast, featuring their signature Breakfast Casserole. We had a traditional turkey dinner that night, just us and her parents.

Then, despite the subdued weather up to that point, there was a ferocious blizzard on Boxing Day. 

 

Unfortunately, this meant that the furthest household that was planning to come wasn't able to make it due to safety. They're visiting on the day of this post to make up for it, but our paths won't cross this year as we've returned to Kitchener.

Lee-Anne's mother puts a lot of effort into Christmas gifts. The occasion is mostly for her numerous grandchildren, but the adults get treated pretty lavishly too. This year, she packed everyone's bundle into individual, giant gift bags.

I got a new pair of headphones, as I'd recently broken mine. I got a Joy of Painting DVD, as we're trying to use streaming services less and focus more on physical media. And I got a bird bath. Yes, this means the bag was large enough to contain a bird bath.

Currywurst is the Worst

Last Thursday I went to Christkindl Market with the WALES members. Me and Lee-Anne went last year and I did a blog post on it. It's a Christmas-based German celebration that takes place over four days.

I'm going to retread some territory now, because it concerns the completion of a year-long journey. Last time we went, me and Lee-Anne got schnitzel from a German food truck. The menu was hand-written and only posted at the front of the line, so we stuck with a safe choice. But when we were ordering, I noticed that one of the items was something called "currywurst" and touted to be Germany's most eaten street food. This gave us buyer's remorse, as we would have liked to try this thing we've never had, which was supposedly their specialty.

Later that year, this food truck was at the Canada Day celebration in Waterloo Park. It was the only one with decent meal options, all the others being just snacks. So it had a ridiculous line and me and Lee-Anne waited like an hour and a half. But we wanted that currywurst. When we got to the front they didn't have it. Totally not worth the wait.

They were at the Cherry Festival as well and it wasn't on their menu.

I looked up recipes for it online, thinking that I might make it if that were the only option. I wrote it on our whiteboard, on our list of recipes to try. It's basically cut up sausage on fries with sauce. I was a little skeptical, because one of the main ingredients is ketchup and I notoriously dislike it. But I know that it can sometimes be used as an ingredient without ruining the overall impression of a dish. 

Christmas was approaching and I thought I'd hold off to see if maybe this food truck specifically does it for Christkindl Market, as it's the only celebration where people might be enticed to leave their culinary comfort zones for something German. Maybe Oktoberfest too, but we never participate in that.

So this year, when I went during the day with WALES members, I snuck a peak at this food truck's menu. Indeed, they had currywurst.

My brother had been going to make dinner but was feeling sick, leaving me and Lee-Anne without plans. It seemed opportune, so we decided to go that evening.

We also took our time to wander about and look at things. A big part of the festivities were hosted inside Kitchener City Hall. As something separate from the market, this place always has a display for a local artist. It just so happened that this time it featured the person that we bought a painting of citrus fruits from. I believe I posted about that when I talked about the Central Art Walk.

I guess it's okay to share the artist's name since she's a public figure. It's Lee Anngold. When I tried to explain why I was excited to see her work to the WALES members, they said "Lee-Anne made that?!" confusing the artist with my wife, who they know. I wasn't able to clarify effectively.

On the evening trip, Lee-Anne bought a little gnome to put on our Christmas tree. This year, we have a two dimensional display as an attempt to avoid our cats from messing with it. It's working okay, but they still bat at the ornaments.

We bought some flavoured fudge. Last year we tried the eggnog version and something else that I forget. This time we bought lemon meringue and peanutbutter crunch. Pretty good!

There was someone selling small novelty plant pots. I kind of wanted to get one for propagating a succulent. I have a jade plant that I got during my first year at my current job. Someone was giving out cuttings, coincidentally on my birthday and seven years later mine is the only one still alive. I managed to propagate a cutting from it, which I keep at work. 

But we have another succulent now, one that we got from Lee-Anne's late grandmother's house. It's done well over here, to the point of getting a little overgrown for the one small window that the cats can't get to. Randomly, one day we found a piece of it on the floor, looking cleanly severed. Not having a proper plant pot, we filled a jam jar with soil and some small rocks at the bottom for drainage. This has worked out okay, but I would like to transplant it or maybe get a cutting from the main one to propagate at work.

 There was someone selling oldschool games and toys. I noticed that they had yoyos. Back when I was a child, randomly one year yoyos were trending. But they were automatic ones which I thought were stupid. Kids would buy them and watch them do tricks, as if this somehow reflected their skill. I really wanted just a normal one, and I'm pretty sure the ones this vendor had were just wood and string.

Anyway, I was too shy to buy a plant pot or a yoyo. Maybe I just need to keep going for a few years, until I develop enough familiarity to buy things, like at the Art Walks.

Anyway, we did eventually buy some currywurst. It was bitterly cold, and the person standing at the front seemed almost delirious from exposure to the elements. He seemed to be in an almost frantic state of adrenaline, being extremely jovial and personable despite losing track of orders, prices, and not being able to operate the card machine

Eventually we got our currywurst. It was pretty gross. I kept a brave face and didn't complain until finishing, though, as I knew this was dinner and something highly anticipated. The fries and sausage were fine. The sauce literally seemed to be ketchup with some curry powder sprinkled on.

I haven't had anything so ketchup-heavy since I reconciled my disdain for the condiment. Giving it a good try once more, I won't let those "ketchup is just barbeque sauce" arguers have any leverage anymore. Clearly, there is a vast and significant difference between the two, even in their closer variants.

But I'm still happy I tried it, as it sated the curiosity I'd developed last year when we failed to get "Germany's most popular street food". As it turns out, currywurst is the worst.

Mom's Out of the Hospital

Mom got out of the hospital a week ago today. She had knee surgery the Thursday of that week. They were hoping to get her out by Saturday, but Lee-Anne and I had difficulty finding some of the items needed for her to be discharged.

They wanted us to buy a walker and rent a wheelchair with an elevated left leg rest. Unfortunately, most pharmacies are closed on the weekends and the places that were open didn't have a wheelchair to her specifications. On Sunday, we discussed the situation with the specialist at the hospital, and she agreed that we could bring her home so long as we had a walker and a travel wheelchair, and promised to get her a standard one with an elevated left leg rest the next day. I think they really needed the bed.

If you want to know what a travel wheelchair is, it's one that doesn't have the big wheels in front, so the person can't move themselves and they need someone to push them. We did rent a proper one with an elevated left leg rest the next day, as well as an elevated toilet seat and a grabbing stick. We're fortunate that we already had a shower chair.

I must say, I was surprised that everything was as cheap as it was. At work, I hear members talking about how their accessibility equipment costs thousands of dollars. So I was a little intimidated, and surprised that renting the travel wheelchair for a week was only $40. Buying it would have been $400, which is still cheaper than I expected. The walker cost $60. 

I suppose the people I know that use accessibility tools have had modifications done, and got better quality versions because of the long-term nature of their expected use. That probably pushes the price up, and we got pretty entry-level stuff.

Although we'll be using these things a bit longer than short term. She's projected to need a brace for the next six months or so.

We're lucky that they live as near to us as they do, and that they live on the ground floor of their apartment. Me, Lee-Anne and my brother have alternated going out for walks with her. If this had happened in Guelph and they were still in their basement apartment, that would have been rough.

Of course, then you think that if she had been in Guelph she wouldn't have been hit in the first place. I tend to find ways to blame myself, so I was thinking that maybe the driving in Kitchener is just not what she's used to. But really, this wasn't a situation typical of the city. It could have happened anywhere.

Mom Broke Her Knee

 Last Tuesday evening, I'm sitting at home when I hear someone hammering on our door. "Gryphon! Mom's in the hospital!" my brother's voice shouts.

I run to the door and he briefs me. Fortunately, we live about a five minute walk from the hospital. Unfortunately, this has been convenient for me enough times that I'm versed with what people want when they unexpectedly find themselves there.

I quickly bag some snacks, a bottle of water, and an external battery. We scamper up to the hospital.

She isn't taking visitors right away. When she is, it's one at a time, and I tell my brother to go ahead of me. After he's left, I hear someone call my name. It's somebody that I know. I tell them that it's always odd to run into someone you know under such circumstances. We trade stories about what brought us there.

Eventually, it's my turn. She's on a stretcher in the hallway. I give her the bundle that I'd made for her. She seems okay, except that her knee is unusable. She has retrograde amnesia, with no memory of the event.

But at this time we know some stuff. She had been hit while walking to the grocery store. She had been in the right, proven by the fact that a bus full of witnesses had all seen the driver run a red. It was almost in front of the hospital. I guess if you need to be hit by a car, there's no better place for it.

I take the next day of work off, which proves to be useful as I find myself running between home and the hospital, ferrying things over to her. She has a room now, and we're told that she might be having surgery that day or the next.

We get the police report of what happened. This is where we see a plot twist.

...Unfortunately, I'm not able to share the full story by this medium. The real thing is a little weirder than I'm able to reveal here.

Remember how I said that I'd run into someone I knew in the ER? I traded stories with them and shared their company until it was my turn to visit with Mom.

It was THEM! They were the one that hit Mom in front of the hospital! They'd heard my story, I noted a strong reaction from them, but I just took it as empathy. They must have known, or at least strongly suspected that they were involved in my mom being there, but they didn't disclose.

Even if you wind up in the same Emergency Room as the person that hit your mom, what are the chances that it will be the one person in a crowd that you know outside the event? This really felt like an example of reality being stranger than fiction.

Art Walks, 2025

Me and Lee-Anne went on the two local Art Walks this year, as we usually do. The one in our neighbourhood was smaller than the one branching from downtown, which is usual. However, it seemed like the disparity was increased this year. The Central Art Walk was only eight locations, and they could be divided into two separate "clusters" with a lot of unused space between them, whereas the Frederick Art Walk was so busy that we weren't even able to complete the whole thing.

It wasn't too long ago that I would go to these things, skirt along the perimeter, snatch glances of artwork and avoid talking to anyone. This year, we were not only involved in every stop we came across, but we spent perhaps an irresponsible amount of money.

The place I got this from generously hosted several contributors, one of whom noted that I was from his neighbourhood. He was enthusiastic to explain the background of the painting to me. While it looked good in the place that I purchased it from, it doesn't quite have the same effect here. I'll find a place to display it where it's appreciated.

The top two images of the sunset and the flower vase are from someone at WALES. The bottom depiction of a cat walking by a rainbow was from someone else. They were both stationed at our office, which was hosting several artists.

We got a bunch of magnets. For some reason, these were a trend this year.

We bought a crochet cactus named Carl Tractor. Each of his line got a story associated with them, which you might see as a thought bubble floating behind him. It says: 

"He once beat an advanced computer at chess, but could never do it again. He takes his sister to the movies every Sunday."

Last year, Lee-Anne ran into someone with Girlguide cookies. She'd run out by the time we got there, but we exchanged phone numbers for when the next batch arrived. That didn't come, but when we were shopping for clay ghosts this year, the seller reminded us that she was the one that had promised cookies. Luckily, she had them in stock this time.

Stickers were also popular. Lee-Anne has been riding her bike more frequently, and she's heard that the best deterrent for theft is stickers, because they're inconvenient to remove and visually distinct. So she got a bunch on the art walks

The same guy that I buy bowls from had charcuterie boards. I wound up getting two, one for us and one for my mother and brother.

Last year I got a homemade calendar, which I was hoping to see again. The house was open, but there were no calendars this year.