My Two Lives

Have you seen the #Hamilfilm yet?

July 15, 2020

Updated Tue 11 August 2020 to include changes in the order of how the ensemble members are sorted.

The movie had been scheduled for an October 2021 release but, since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the Great Bright Way, the Hamilton producers were able to get the release date pushed up.

As we got ready for the premiere of the movie, dubbed the #Hamilfilm, the Disney Studios Twitter account posted a series of images to serve as a premier program for the film’s release, similar to the Playbills that theatergoers get when they see the stage production. I quickly saved the images to my laptop so I could refer to them while watching the movie, and I ended up creating a PDF of the files to use them more easily. I added a Playbill-style cast listing that incorporates some of the ensemble track information from the Hamilcast podcast, which I’ve already shared on Twitter.

Version 3 of my Hamilfilm complete cast pages

Twitter user Mrs. Bullwinkle told me about a graphic created by The Hamilton Bracelet listing the times within the movie for each of the songs so we can jump to them, and I’ve since added that to my PDF.

Meanwhile, I’ve been asking both the Disney Studios and the Hamilton producers if they’d mind if I shared my PDF. If they said not to share it, I’d drop the matter, but I haven’t gotten any response, so I looked for the best way to share it. I found a website that turns PDF files into digital magazines and created an account, but the uploading process should take ten minutes, and it’s already been over an hour since I uploaded my PDF.

Silly me, because I can easily share the PDF via this site. This is the third version of the PDF, and if I update it again, I’ll update this page. The first version was just the images from the Disney Studios, and the cast pages above, although without the source credit for the ensemble tracks and the head shots. The second version added the Hamilton Song Cheat Sheet, and this newest version got the credit information on the cast pages.

Hamilfilm Premiere Program w Cast v4 Download

Of course, if Disney or the Hamilton team asks me to take this PDF down, I will. In the meantime, I hope this adds to your enjoyment of the #Hamilfilm. If you’re like me and wasn’t sure if you wanted to buy Disney+, the $9.99 monthly cost is a lot less than the price of a ticket to the theatre, and you can watch it as many times as you want in any given month. Talk about a bargain!

Watch the #Hamilfilm on Disney+. Make sure you watch the whole credits to hear the exit music that you can’t hear on the Original Broadway Cast Recording (OBCR), and don’t forget to watch the extras.

*Alas, not every country around the world can get Disney+, so their wish still has yet to be granted.

Closing out 2019 on a good note

December 30, 2019

My weight has been an ongoing battle over the last couple of years, but this year has had some good news on the bod front.

If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen several celebrations as I got nice lower numbers from my scale. For years in my teens and twenties I weighed in around 150 lbs., and I considered 200 lbs. to be a red line I did NOT want to cross even as it got harder to keep my weight down once I hit my 30’s. As I started 2017 I was logging my weight as part of my weekly measurements to track how my body changed with hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I’m not nearly as active as I used to be so my weight kept heading upward. Granted, that’s kind of a good thing as my body started filling out and getting feminized, but I still disliked my weight getting too high.

You can imagine my displeasure as I started 2019 at close to 235 lbs. My favorite clothes didn’t fit anymore, and I simply hated being so heavy after spending so much time in the 150s. I knew that between my metabolism changing and my HRT I’ll probably never be in the 150s again but I hoped to get back to around 185. Over the last year, I realized 185 was too big a goal to reach for at once so I set interim goals of 200 and 215 lbs.

For some reason, I tweeted that I had hit 215 lbs on 13 December but forgot to write about it here. I no longer take my weekly measurements since I’ve reached a plateau in my changes, although I do log my weight every Sunday as I log my blood sugar and blood pressure at my doctor’s suggestion. I also try to step on the scale twice a day to try to catch when I eat too much to try and get rid of it the next day, and I smiled yesterday morning when I logged 216 yesterday. I figured I might log my measurements either today or tomorrow to get the end of the year readings, depending on what my scale showed in the mornings.

Today I was so amazed when I stepped on my scale I immediately moved my laptop into the bedroom so I could log the measurements before I had a chance to forget to do it as I started my day. (It’s been known to happen.) The magic number from the scale? 214.6, a number I hadn’t seen in over two years.

I grabbed a summary of how my body changed over the course of 2019 for my trans sisters. I’ve been on HRT for over 3 years and it’s been slow going, but I’m sharing this year’s numbers to show that you should be patient. The changes are coming. All numbers are in inches.

Overall I’ve added 3.25 inches to my bust over the past 3-and-a-half years, almost an inch and a quarter to my hips and an inch to my bum. I only added an inch to my waist over that time and I’d prefer more in my hips and bum but I’ll take what I can get at this point.

I hope everyone has a fantabulous start to their 2020, and may your new year be at least a sight better than 2019 was. Goddess knows that for all the good news I’ve had there’s been a crapload of bad news too, but that’s just how the old cookie crumbes, eh?

I’ve unfollowed several WordPress sites

October 24, 2019

The problem with doing three different sites is I can get multiple notifications for the same sites. Today I went through the sites I follow via WordPress and moved all the Second Life related sites I follow to the account connected with nancisnaughties.com.

I’ve also unfollowed several sites relating to writing because I’m no longer doing any creative writing outside of my two WP sites. That’s simply to cut down on some of the clutter associated with this WP account. If you’re in that group of sites please know that ho offense is intended, it’s just a matter of only having so many hours in already busy days.

I’m still going to be updating this site, although my Nanci’s Naughties site will get the most activity simply because I have new products coming out every month in Second Life, and many of the designs I create will be available in my real-world clothing store as well.

If you’re in Second Life and you’re finding that I no longer follow you with this WP account or the old Nanci’s Naughties account it’s likely I’ve followed you on my new NN account. I hope to see you over there.

As I say on the SL store site, stay naughty out there, y’all. Just remember, you can be naughty without being an asshole. There is a difference.

My ebooks are out of print

October 22, 2019

When I first started this site it was to support my writing, but I haven’t written anything in a very long time other than posts here and on my other sites.

Since I don’t expect to do any more writing, this evening I took all of my ebooks out of print. I also removed the menu item about my books, although the pages will stay on the site since going through the posts to remove the links, or the posts themselves, will require more energy than it’s worth.

I’ve told Smashwords, Amazon and Google Play to stop selling my ebooks, and it will take some time to get the word out to all of Smashwords’ distribution partners so if you’re interested in my writing you’ll need to search quickly for them since I expect them to leave all the sites by early November.

Have a Happy All Hallows’ Eve, everybody.

My favorite #PhotoOfTheDay sites

August 24, 2019

I haven’t written much on this site because I’ve been concentrating mostly on the site I created for Nanci’s Naughties, my Second Life store. If you follow me on Twitter you know there has been some good news lately that I need to post here.

Something else you may know from Twitter is that I have some websites that I hit every day for a Photo of the Day rotation, and I wanted to share them with everyone here so you can have a place to find my list if you find you want to join me in checking out some pretty pictures every day.

I originally found these sites thanks to the Photo of the Day widget created for KDE 4 on Linux. The widget doesn’t work anymore since I upgraded my laptop to KDE 5 on SolydK Linux but I have a page of links I created for my start page so I can continue checking them out every day.

The first site is the Astronomy Photo of the Day. If you love looking up at the stars you need to visit this site often, and they even make it easy for folks who follow them on Twitter.

Next comes Steve’s Digicams with their Photo of the Day contest. Every day you get a picture from around the world. I use a slideshow of photos I find online as my desktop wallpaper (I generally have my laptop busy too often to set up a screensaver) and there are a lot of photos from Steve’s contest in the mix. I could also include them in a screensaver but my laptop is in use so often that I don’t use a screensaver.

Another great compilation comes from National Geographic, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone. NatGeo is known for their gorgeous photography, and their Your Shot program is the source for another folder of amazing photos in my wallpaper rotation. They also have the pictures in their NatGeo Photography Twitter stream, giving you another reason to follow them.

A site that used to be in the app is Wikimedia Commons, but a change to their site broke their part of the KDE app a couple of years ago. They make it easy to check a month worth of pictures, and one of these days I need to get in the habit of checking their site often again.

A non-photo site to hit daily

There’s another site I hit every day, but not to see pretty pictures. FreeKibble.com was created by a then 11-yeard old Mimi Ausland as a way to provide food to animals in shelters. Simply answering fun, one-question quizzes about dogs and cats provides ten pieces of kibble to our furry friends, and there’s even a way to provide litter for the kitties. My bookmark starts with the kitty quiz, and after feeding the felines I provide them with some litter I give the doggos some food, too. Plus you get to learn a little something about our furry friends. It doesn’t cost me a dime, just a little time, and they regularly have double days where you can double the amount of food you provide without doing anything extra.

Mimi recently launched a new site, Free The Ocean, to help clear our oceans of plastic. Every day answering the quiz helps remove one piece of plastic from the ocean. Yeah, it’s not much, but as I write this, people on the site have helped remove over 77,000 pieces of plastic from our oceans. And I’ve learned a little more about the planet I live on, which is always a good thing.

Do you have a Photo of the Day site that you check often? Let me know in the comments and help us all find more beauty to add to our lives.

Comfort food from my days at summer camp

March 16, 2019

Camp Windywood at the Fontainebleau State Park in Mandeville, LA.

Updated 22 April to finally add a picture of the egg placed into your ring of bread. I’m sorry it took so long to get added.

When I was a kid my mom was a single mother, and my brother sister and I lived with our grandparents. Since my grandmother was a Girl Scout leader known as Cappy that meant every summer until I was old enough to be left behind I got packed off to Camp Windywood. Being a tween-aged boy I wasn’t thrilled with having to go to Girl Scout camp every summer, although now I wish I had been able to enjoy more of it. Back then I was a city kid who hadn’t fallen in love with being able to get out in the woods from time to time like I do now.

One thing I always enjoyed about going to camp was cooking on buddy burners, and the way we cooked fried eggs was so tasty that I still cook eggs that way 40 years later and refer to them as camp-style eggs.

more …

My SL neighborhood’s getting crowded

February 26, 2019

I’ve been off SL a bit since getting teeth pulled on Friday but I logged on today to get caught up on some things and found something interesting when I looked across the street from my house.

So much for being in a nice, quiet neighborhood

I don’t mind getting more neighbors, but with four new homes across the street, there will definitely be more demand on my local server. I hope that doesn’t cause a problem for my store, which is right next door to my house.

My house and store in the Oppeano region of Second Life

Luckily I use vendors for my store rather than putting each individual tee on the wall so it keeps the server load down.

Speaking of my store, there’s now a site exclusively for my store, and it’s a great place to see what I’m doing with the store. If you haven’t checked out my Nanci’s Naughties site yet you should definitely pay it a visit.

Success! Again!

January 9, 2019

Back in April, I wrote that my hormone therapy was doing a good job of changing my body, but when I took my weekly measurements yesterday I got some pleasant surprises, including one I wasn’t sure I’d see.

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This site has a new identity

January 2, 2019

As you probably noticed the site is no longer called Words from an Author. This is because I haven’t been doing much writing in a while and it felt wrong to have a site about my writing that isn’t getting written.

The site is now a more general site as I look at both my real life and my adventures in the virtual world Second Life (SL). You’ll still see my updates about life as a trans woman, but I’ll probably be posting more about SL. You can still find my ebooks in the menu at the top of the page, and who knows, there may be an addition to my books at some point.

I’ve also changed the theme for the site, and I may change it again if I find a theme I like better. What won’t change? The URL for the site. It’ll still be jmhardinwrites.wordpress.com. I hope you stick around.

New Year, New SL Digs

January 2, 2019

In addition to buying a new motorcycle, I decided I’d start the new year by getting new land in Second Life so I have the room to use the Novatech Smith II Console Room. I’d prefer to use either the Capaldi version of the room or Jody Whitaker’s new TARDIS, but neither are available for Novatech’s Type 100 TARDIS as of yet. I could use it on my land in Gilum, but I don’t have the prim allotment to use it and a house. (My land in Gilum is for sale, and at what I feel are pretty reasonable prices. I’ll add SLURLs below in case you’re interested.)

The new land is a pair of parcels in Oppeano so I have almost 900 prims available, and it’s right on SL Route 12 so I can ride my motorcycle easily. I tried flattening the land, but my new Key West house from InVerse would either have land poking up in the back or I’d have to rotate the house, which I really didn’t want to have to do. The property faces south, so I’ll get the morning sun in the windows. Between buying the land and buying my new house someone bought the parcel directly to the east of mine, but once I finished setting up my house and finished dinner they realized someone was actually going to use the two parcels west of them and abandoned the property. (Sorry!)

I was going to put a driveway between my house and Temple North, the property to the west of mine, but I couldn’t get it to work very well. Luckily I discovered I have access to the highway on the east side of my property.

The inside of my new house is even nicer than my previous house. Unfortunately, my felines won’t be able to climb the stairs so access to the bedroom and bathroom are all mine. I ended up parking the TARDIS in my entryway, but I may move it to the living room if adding a room to the TARDIS needs more space on my parcel. Directly opposite the TARDIS is a cute fireplace with some plants beside it. There’s no chimney, which I think is an interesting design decision, but I can turn it off if I don’t want to use it.

The sofa’s not much to look at, but I have a free TV to watch once I find something to program into the set. I’m guessing the columns on either side of the TV are cabinets, but I can’t see how to open them so they’re just decoration. It’s ok because they’re pretty just like they are.

At the top of the stairs is my bedroom, complete with a tub behind a screen. I may have to either darken the windows completely when I get in the tub or either put another screen between the tub and window or put up some curtains. I’m not sure how often folks use Temple North but I’d hate to give them a free peep show. The pictures so far have the windows on the Mid Opacity setting, but I realized I needed to turn off opacity completely for the next pictures.

This is the view form my headboard, and you can see how nice the view can be through that big window on the front of the house.

If I move to the railing you can see there’s water not far from my house, and you can see it even better from my front door.

It turns out the beach is just a short flight to abandoned beachfront property in Quilassito, the next region to the south of Oppeano. I may keep my eyes peeled for when it goes on sale or up for auction, but I may just install my pool on the current property.

As I said earlier, I’m selling my two parcels in Gilum since I no longer need them. The smaller parcel on the left is 512 ㎡ and I’m asking L$1500. The parcel on the right is 1024 ㎡ and is L$3000. The property to the left and right is owned by other people so they may want to buy my land when they realize it’s for sale. (When I get notified that either or both parcels have been bought I’ll edit this post to reflect the change.)

If you’re in Second Life feel free to give me a shout. My avatar’s name is Nanci Barthelmess and I’d love to hear from you.