The view outside our office window is constantly changing as workers develop a 1900 era factory complex into a new office and commercial complex. Called the Tannery, new tenants will include a variety of businesses, retail shops and a digital media incubator—the first of its kind in this area, the largest in Canada and possibly, North America.

One artifact that will survive the modernization is a historic, 90+ year old, octagonal brick smoke stack. This 25m high landmark is the last of its kind left standing in Kitchener-Waterloo.

For the most part, I’m a pretty lucky person. I often claim to be a pretty co-coordinated person even at the worst of times. I would also like to say that both of these statements still hold true. Instead, I’m writing this post with my left hand because my luck and co-ordination both handed in their resignations at the same and left me with a broken elbow.

Rewind to last Friday afternoon. Mother Nature seemed to have a point to prove and it was that winter is not over! Maybe it’s that I refuse to accept winter as part of my reality or because I openly and regularly express my hatred for the season where the fates can hear. It may even be that I’m really not as graceful as I’d like to think, though the last time I took a major spill it was compared to Katharine Hepburn falling: something that doesn’t happen or if it does, would seem completely out of the ordinary. Regardless of the reason, walking back to the office from lunch was far more eventful than I would have liked. One minute, James and I were talking about the recoding process and then the next thing I knew, my feet were no longer on the ground. In fact they were the only bit of me that wasn’t. It took a moment to register that I just completely wiped out and in front of someone I had just recently met. As far as embarrassment goes, it was brief. I realized that I have no right to be embarrassed about falling, mainly because of how funny I seem to think it is when other people fall (as long as they aren’t actually injured of course). So I popped back onto my feet, convinced I was just fine; at worst I’d end up with an ugly bruise. Bruise indeed.

Fast-forward another ten hours and I’m staring at an x-ray of my arm and the ER doctor is telling me that my elbow is broken. Fantastic.

Luckily, when I was young I used to have a friend that was left-handed and I always thought it was fun to try to do things the way she did. I think I should have kept practicing though. While most things are not as hard as I thought, some other things are considerably harder. While I can still easily wrap a towel around my hair after a shower or use chop sticks with a decent level success, turns out brushing my teeth with my left hand is actually fairly difficult. I’m still learning though. With two weeks left, I plan on being fully ambidextrous by the time the cast comes off!