angry inch

oh, hello.

i am GIVING AWAY my wig collection.

it consists of 8 - 10 wigs of all kinds... ranging from a couple grandma wigs (from the little old lady phase) to a foot-and-a-half high marge simpson wig in a brilliant shade of lavender.

the catch is you must make arrangements with me to pick them up - and solid arrangements must be made by sunday, march 2nd. additionally, you have to take the whole lock, stock and barrel.

talk soon!

thank u

thank you to the humans that came out to spin some records, give some hugs, shimmy for a few songs and share the love on my birthday.

so many favorite friends. i love you.

happy 30th birthday to me.

count back from 30...

Get ready to get sweaty, the dirty thirties are here.

Put on your dancing shoes and come to wish me a happy 30th birthday.

It is going to be madness.

Where:
Black Frog – 108 Cambie Street in Gastown (as far north on cambie as you can go before hitting the train tracks)
http://www.theblackfrog.ca/

When:
Saturday, January 26th
9pm – close

What:
anghold turns 30, so of course there has to be a…
DANCE DANCE DANCE PARTY!!!
Come dressed to impress, after all, I only turn 30 once. I expect some slick moves and some foxy dancing shoes.

Who:
You. Your friends. My friends. Friendly friends.

Other details:
The folks at the Black Frog have been informed that 100 of my closest friends will be joining me in drinking, dancing and celebrating awesomeness.

The lovely and talented Mike Flintoff and the adorable and inimitable Jeffrey McCloy will be spinning 60's garage, soul, r & b, and reggae all night long. They are guaranteed to keep you tapping your feet.

This is not a private party, and the doors are open to the public. Black Frog is a fairly small venue with maximum capacity of 100 – 110. I expect that we will hit that capacity early on in the evening.

I will be there from 9pm until someone sends me home in a cab, party dress soaked to the skin.

Save a dance for me.

Obsequiously yours,
choke hold

i like big butts

Ass backwards.

So, it appears that I am going back to school again. Since completing my Bachelor of Arts almost 6 years ago, I have completed one college program and am about to enter into another. I say that it ‘appears’ that I am going back to school because I clearly do not have the money to complete the whole program, but I have gone ahead and signed up for the first course anyway. Though I could technically finish the program in 6 – 8 months, I imagine I will stretch it out over more like a year and a half.

It will come as no surprise to anyone (aside from me) that the program that I am doing is for Career Development Practitioner certification. Read: vocational counseling.

You may recall from my training in general counseling, I absolutely hated the elective course that I did in vocational counseling. But, as I find myself increasingly working with friends and family to explore their education and career options, help revise/ rewrite people’s resumes, and scour the interweb for appropriate job postings for people, I feel that it is time for me to gain more skills to help people out. If it ends up leading to my next career, so be it.

On a meta level, it is amusing that I, were I my own client, would likely not recommend that I go into vocational counseling – as it is an industry that is not congruent with my employment needs (very few part time opportunities, very few positions that have medical and dental, mainly contract work, lower wages than my current career, etc.). Good thing I can appreciate irony.

the birthday party

I had best sneak a post in here before November leaves us.

And now that I have said that, I will not be able to get Guns ‘n Roses lyrics out of my head for the next hour. November Rain.

Anyway, the last few months have been a bit…. mind numbing. Increasingly, I find myself staring off into space, crawling back into bed, performing repetitions, biding my time.

All this happens as I ramp up to my 30^th birthday. I plan to make a big deal out of my birthday… not for anyone’s benefit but my own. A couple of years ago, a lovely lady at the MS clinic asked me if I had re-dreamed my dreams yet.

Have I re-dreamed my dreams?
Have I re-goaled my goals?
Have I re-visualized my vision of the future?

And still, my answer is ‘no’.

Don’t know how yet. Going to try. Even if it means simply imagining how to feel part of a community again. Even if it means simply imagining what my vocational calling is. Even if it means simply joining a hip-hop dance class to see if I have any moves left in me. Even if it means admitting to myself that having Multiple Sclerosis has made me feel more desperately lost than I had ever even imagined was possible – admitting this so that I can really feel that feeling and move on.

30 is the new awesome.

Whatever happens, there will be cake and some ghostly shapes of dreams, desperately trying to take form. Hope you can make it.

every shining time you arrive

Holy crap, it has been a long time since I posted anything.

I have given up my enthusiasm for blog posting in favour of playing online scrabble. Oh yes, it is true.

Since last we spoke, I have been off on vacation for about two and a half weeks. To be more specific, I had a secret wedding and then went to Tofino for my honeymoon. Har! Har! Har!

This proves, as I have been telling anyone who will listen, that I have somehow learned to keep my own secrets. I have always said that I have no problem keeping other people’s secrets – but keeping my mouth shut about my own surprises and exciting plans has always been a weak area. A ‘problem area’, if you please.

I have been cured!

I have been surprised to find out that the first thing that many people ask me when I tell them that I just got hitched is “Are you going to have children?”

Huh?

Um, no.

The second, and much more worthy of discussion, question that people seem to ask is “What made you guys decide to get married?”

That answer is a little more longwinded.

I suppose that there are a lot of reasons…. Most importantly – I want to be married to Lief because I like him and love him in a way that deserves my commitment. Just as I do no see monogamy in the lowest-common-denominator sense of the word, I also do not see marriage in the traditional way.

Fluttery language aside, I think our vows were pretty genuine:

I call on those present to witness that I,
Angela, take Lief to be my lawful wedded
husband. Lief, I promise to help and
support you as you grow, change, and
become the best Lief you can be, I
promise to laugh with you and have
fun, to listen to you and be
understanding and empathic, to
appreciate you and your skills, talents,
and hard work, and to show you, in
every way that I can, that I love you.

SMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCH!

these are a few of my mother's friends

no surprise here.

- choke hold



from the Globe and Mail

Want friends? Then better log off the Net

MICHAEL KAHN

Reuters

September 10, 2007 at 12:40 PM EDT

YORK — Having a huge network of online buddies does not mean you have any more close friends than the rest of us, a British researcher said on Monday.

Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are changing the nature of how people connect by making it easy to collect hundreds of friends and acquaintances online.

“Our data suggests weak ties are (more common) but there is no difference in the number of close friends people have,” said Will Reader, an evolutionary psychologist at Sheffield Hallam University.

“Nearly all our close friends require face-to-face contact,” Reader told a meeting sponsored by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

The researchers focused on Facebook and MySpace, two of the most popular sites where millions of people express themselves online with personal photographs, musings and other content while adding “friends” to their network.

In their study, Reader and colleagues asked people a series of questions about their attitudes toward friendships and found 90 per cent of individuals said it was imperative to know somebody face-to-face to form the tightest bonds.

The key it seems is face-to-face interaction where people can interpret social clues such as laughs and smiles that help determine if others are friends to be counted on, Reader said.

“That weird experience of laughing together where people can find they have similar goals and experiences is necessary,” Reader said.

“It is a bit like a dance between two scorpions where one is wondering if the other is going to eat me or sleep with me.”

Other studies have shown most people have about 150 people in their extended networks, with just a small number considered a member of the inner circle of close friends, Reader said.

Even when people's social networks ballooned into many hundreds or more than a thousand people, the number of close friendships did not change, he said.

“One of the possibilities is that changing the nature of these networks can decrease the cost of maintaining friendships,” Reader said.