Second Life Archives - My Two Lives

The thumbnail for a MIDI preview of "Somewhere Someone Cares"

We have a preview of “Somewhere Someone Cares”

September 8, 2025

This article is part of a series on the recording of my song Somewhere Someone Cares. You can find the articles in the series under the category SSC.

Whoops! Last week’s update didn’t get published. As I was finishing up the previous week’s update, I had to go to the emergency room. I won’t get into what happened, but my entire Labor Day got screwed up. It took me most of last week to get back on track. But in the process of getting back on track, I made a preview of Somewhere Someone Cares that I can share.

Momma wants a mixer

I recently found a tool I had been wanting. As a former recording and live sound engineer, I love having a physical mixing console. I find it easier to adjust faders with my hands rather than with a mouse. I know I can buy physical mixing desks that I can use with my computer via MIDI. The problem is that they’re expensive for an older person on a fixed income. The space to set one up is also at a premium in my studio.

Enter TouchDAW

I had run a search for an app I could use on my tablet before, but hadn’t found anything. I looked again recently, I found a thread on the Linux Musicians forums. The thread I found is on controlling Ardour with an Android device. I had seen it before, but it has a link to a site in Japanese. Since I can’t read Japanese, I had ignored it.

What I hadn’t noticed before was a reference to an app called TouchDAW. The developer calls it “a full-featured DAW controller combined with some general purpose MIDI tools running on Android™ devices and recent Chromebooks.” TouchDAW loooks like it’s just what I was looking for. I installed the app on my tablet, but found a problem on my laptop. It requires a program called rtpMIDI, and that’s not available for the version of Debian Linux my laptop runs.

I run SolydK Linux 12 on my laptop. SolydK 12 is built on Debian 12 (Bookworm), but rtpMIDI was recently rebuilt and requires Debian 13 (Trixie). There is a disk image of SolydK 13 available for installing (and testing), which is good news. I’ll update my laptop as soon as the updare script is released. Then I can install rtpMIDI and TouchDAW. TouchDAW has a demo you can try, and if it’s the solution I think it is, I’ll gladly pay the $4.99 to buy the full program.

I can haz guitar tracks nao?

I’m still working on recording the rhythm guitar track under my fingers. After adding the organ solo to the song, I needed to add room for it to my files in Ardour. I ended up printing out the master score for the song. Now I can see exactly where the regions from the organ solo going out needed to be.

I remembered that I had started creating the lead vocal melody music, but what I wrote wasn’t accurate. I couldn’t lock in the syncopated rhythm. The melody itself isn’t hard to get. After all, I’ve been singing the song to myself (and my furry son Chuck) for two decades. My fingers couldn’t get the rhythms right to play it into MuseScore. I ended up writing the music old school, one note at a time. I now have sheet music with lyrics for an original song for the first time ever.

Wait, now the timings are wrong

I had jotted down the timings for each section of my song on the lyric sheet, but since I added the organ solo, I had to redo the timings. It turns out the file I was using for the lyric sheet went to the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky at some point, so I had to recreate the file. That’s actually not a problem, because now I can add the timings to the lyric sheet document itself.

As I tried to add the melody to the score, the rhythm for the lyrics, I kept finding that the rhythm wasn’t right in one spot. But when I started trying to place the lyrics, the rhythm of the line fell into place. I now have not only the lead vocal part written out, but I also have the harmony vocals written. I plan on eventually creating a piano/vocal version of the song in case someone wants it at some point.

Moving right along…

Once I had the vocals written, I turned my attention to the music for the Hammond B3 organ and Fender Rhodes. I had preliminary tracks for those instruments on BandLab, and I was able to finish their music pretty quickly. I still have to come up with the guitar and organ solos, but I’m going to hold off on that until after I get reference guitar and lead vocals recorded.

Houston, we have a preview

Since I have the majority of the music for the song written, I created a preview video of the song with MuseScore. This will give you an idea of how the song sounds, and you can see what the lyrics are and how they fit into the arrangement.

A flute covers the lead vocals in the video. Synthesized “ahs” cover the harmonies to give you an idea of what I have in mind. You can see the vocals with the top stave of the score, but in case they’re not legible in the video, they’re in the description on YouTube.

Once I get the reference guitar and vocal tracks recorded, I’ll post another preview of the song. I won’t promise it will be a preview of the whole song like this one is, but it should give you a better sense of where the song is going.

Meanwhile, in Second Life

My virtual self is opening a new store in Second Life. The store is pretty much laid out, and I’m in the process of making a new sign for the store in Blender. Once that’s made, and I get some plants in the store, there will be an inworld Nanci’s Naughties store for the first time since COVID hit. Keep an eye on the website, follow my avatar on Bluesky, or join the Nanci’s Naughties SL group to find out when the new store opens.

What’s next?

I need to bring the new, longer drum chart into Ardour as a MIDI file and re-tweak the track to correct some differences between what MuseScore plays and what my virtual drumkit will play. A MIDI file of the longer bass line will get uploaded to BandLab so I can export it using their virtual bass. Then I need to get some serious Strat time and get at least a reference track for it and the lead vocals.

I’m still dealing with the thing that drove me to the emergency room last week, but after a doctor’s appointment today, it’s more manageable until I can schedule an appointment to go in and see about resolving the issue.

Can you believe it’s already September? It seems the older I get, the faster time flies by me. I hope to get next week’s update published on time, which should be late Sunday or early Monday. Take care of yourself, and don’t let the assholes harsh your mellow too much.

Screenshot of the Legislate products in the My Two Lives Spreashirt store.

The Legislate tee is here!

May 19, 2025

Two years ago, I created an LGBTQ+ Pride design for Nanci’s Naughties, my Second Life t-shirt store. It said, “You Can’t Legislate Us Out of Existence.” The Second Life tees weren’t good enough to sell, but I did make the design available in my real-life t-shirt store. The original version was dated for Pride 2023, and I didn’t get it updated in time for last year. The new Legislate tee is here!

The design is on 38 products in the My Two Lives Spreadshirt shop, including shirts, drinkware, totes, magnets, and buttons. There’s even a teddy bear, but it’s currently out of stock

Why buy my Spreadshirt products?

Spreadshirt shop products are printed to order and shipped as quickly as possible. There will be several promotions to help you save money as you get ready for Pride month.

The quality of the items is so good that I’ve also given some as gifts. If there’s a problem, the customer service is top-notch. I misordered one of the gifts. I contacted Spreadshirt to see how I could fix my error, they made the item and shipped it out at no charge.

I’m updating my store to put some of my designs on more items. As I do, some of my Nanci’s Naughties designs will become available in the My Two Lives shop. It will take some time, but if you see a design you’d like on a different item, just let me know, and I’ll see what I can do.

I will try and get the updated Legislate design on tees in Second Life, but it will take some time as I still haven’t learned Blender. Since I’ve started wearing the Prima Busty mesh body, I won’t sell any new shirts until I can sell versions for the mesh body I wear.

Check out all of the new Legislate products in the My Two Lives Spreadshirt shop.

Preview of the new Pride Lanes Bowling Center website

The Pride Lanes website has moved the site to a new server

May 10, 2025

This month, the domain name for the Pride Lanes Bowling Center website came up for renewal. The site isn’t getting enough traffic to justify the expense of the domain name, so I moved the site to a new server as a subdomain of NancisNaughties.com, the domain for my Second Life store, Nanci’s Naughties.

I also discovered that I had never updated the site for the expanded Pride Lanes that opened in September 2024. The new website has been completely updated for the new space. There are now six lanes rather than four, a full concession stand, and not one but two bars for when you want a virtual adult beverage.

There is also a dance floor for when you just wanna dance. There are built-in dance animations or you can use your own. If the parcel music from WWOZ in New Orleans isn’t what you want to dance to, you can feel free to fire up any other music to dance to, although you won’t be able to replace the parcel media with it.

The arcade area originally had several games you could play, but most of them were removed due to the creator of the games using AI. I prefer using objects and gadgets created by real people, and I’m on the lookout for more games to put out at Pride Lanes.

Pride Lanes now has its own house bowling balls that you can get to use at Pride Lanes and other bowling centers that use the Bergson Bowing System. I have another ball design I’m working on, but it’s not ready to be shared yet.

You can find the brand new Pride Lanes Bowling Center website at pridelanes.nancisnaughties.com. Check out the new website and grab a taxi to Pride Lanes Bowling Center in Second Life. You may find it’s a great place for you and your friends to visit.

Where’s the music, JM?

April 10, 2025

In January, I said that Transbian Studio was back in operation. It’s now April, and I haven’t posted any music. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on it.

I’ve set up Ardour and laid down some MIDI drums for Somewhere Someone Cares. But my folding keyboard got wonky while laying down more tracks. I tried to get it serviced before the warranty expired but could never find out where to bring it.

Momma needs new keys

My music needs a keyboard to record it. I ultimately gave up on repairing the old keyboard and bought a used M-Audio Keystation 49es MIDI controller. It’s my first proper MIDI keyboard with a touch-sensitive keyboard and pitch bend and modulation wheels. Musician’s Friend had it for a sweet price, and it’s just what I needed to create music. I already had a virtual Hammond B-3 organ, and I found a great virtual piano for recording piano tracks. But Somewhere Someone Cares needs a synth with a nice chimey piano sound. I discovered Dexed, an open-source virtual Yamaha DX7, along with hundreds of patches (sounds). I’m still going through the virtual cartridges to see what all the sounds are, but I’ve found several possibilities.

But first…

Photo of me recording vocal tracks for “PM Carney’s Song”

America’s chief executive officer decided to make himself a king, even though our Constitution clearly states that the founders rejected the possibility of having one. I’ve long been a fan of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, and one of my favorite songs is King Herod’s Song (Try It And See). I saw huge possibilities for a parody dedicated to the politician I refer to as Dear Leader, and over a couple of weeks the lyrics took shape.

Next up was to figure out who would be singing it. British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was a possibility but he’s too far away. Canada’s Justin Trudeau was a thought, but he had already stepped down. When I saw Mark Carney make his first speech as prime minister, I knew who would be doing the singing. Besides being our northern neighbor, the US tariffs made Carney the perfect casting.

I considered grabbing a karaoke track of the song for a limited release, and I discovered a way to get a proper backing track with a non-commercial license that lets me post the finished song on social media.

It’s taken several takes to get a vocal track I can live with, and I may still do one more take to fix a couple of vocal issues. Once I have a final mix, I plan to post the song here and on Bluesky before the day I call Bunny Day. After singing my own music off and on since the 80s, I’ll finally have a song released publicly.

What about the cat pictures?

I apologize for dropping the ball on posting pictures of Chuck and his litter mates. Life through too many things on my plate and I wasn’t able to get back to them.

Chuck is now a ten-month-old big boi weighing in at 12 pounds. He’s outgrown his second harness, but I have a harness that fits him better for when I can let him enjoy the backyard. Now I’m just waiting for another warm enough day for us to spend some time outside.

Spring’s here!

The weather doesn’t always show it, but spring has arrived, and I have several things in various stages of creation to share with y’all. I’ll be updating the product list for my two Spreadshirt shops, and I’ll be updating my Legislation tee for Pride 2025. I’ll be posting updates on my real-life merch as soon as I have them.

A quick note about the Pride Lanes Bowling Center

Unfortunately, I’m taking the website for the Pride Lanes Bowling Center in Second Life offline. The center itself isn’t going anywhere, but the website doesn’t get enough traffic to justify the time and expense it takes to update the site (and the site itself is way overdue for an update). I haven’t decided where the content about the center will be going, but it will be going somewhere.

Have a happy spring, y’all. I know our country is getting downright hostile to folks who aren’t straight, white, and wealthy, but we’re not going to bury our heads in the sand and wait for the next election. Hang in there, and do what you can to stand up for your rights, healthcare, and economy.

Louisiana Jones, Treasure Hunter

September 3, 2024

There’s a company in Second Life called MadPea that makes great games and gadgets. They also put on hunts in Second Life. You can earn fun prizes during their hunts, and the most recent hunt had a prize I had to try and get.

In August, they ran the Treasure Seekers Hunt, a grid-wide adventure seeker’s hunt, and what got me to join the hunt was the Explorer’s Fedora. As a fan of the Indiana Jones movies, I had to get that fedora.

I hadn’t joined one of their hunts before, and I joined this hunt with only a few days to go before the hunt ended on 31 August. In the spirit of the hunt, I had to change my display name to Louisiana Jones for the hunt. No, not Dr. Jones, because I’m an amateur explorer, not an archaeologist. And being a transbian, I’m not looking for a good man a la Dr. River Song.

I didn’t collect all of the available prizes, but I got the fedora and sunglasses. There were a couple of other prizes I would have liked to get, but I didn’t earn enough credits to get them I also got several other goodies that were placed around the grid, and I was able to collect enough gems to get the guide and shaman monkeys. You can see the guide monkey in the feataured image, and it joins me in the video below.

My Adventuring Outfit

Me being me, I wasn’t about to go adventuring without putting together a good adventuring outfit. You can see my outfit in this picture, which I took at the hunt headquarters. My avatar is wearing

PRIMA Busty v. 1.5 mesh body
LeLutka Zora 4.0 mesh head
MINA Juul hair
MadPea Exploer’s Fedora
MadPea Treasure Hunter Sunglasses
Meli Imako Ladies Long Sleeve Shirt (Maitreya V3 version since there are no PRIMA versions)
PRIMA Influence High Waisted Jeans
HeelFolly Lace Up Ankle Boot
Xcite! Coiled Bullwhip (wood handle)

Of course, I had to find a way to play the Indiana Jones theme as I hunted. I found this gesture to handle the job, but it’s only 10 seconds long so its use is limited. I ended up grabbing my Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack CD to make this video.

Video thumbnail for Nanci Singin' in the Rain

Finally, Nanci sings in the rain

April 11, 2024

In July 2020, I got a cute umbrella in Second Life. Co.vet made their Mandala Umbrella in blue available in the Fifty5 Thursday sale. It had a rainy day version which included rain around the avatar. Since then I’ve been wanting to create a video inspired by Fred Astaire’s classic movie musical number but I struggled to find the right outfit and animations to bring it to life. That has recently changed, and I am now able to create the video I’ve been wanting to make.

Second Life creator Junk Food had their Rainy Umbrella available during last week’s Fifty Linden Friday. Of course, I had to buy it. It didn’t have the amount of rain I wanted for Fred’s song-and-dance number, but it was cute enough to see what I could do with it. I already had a nice tux from Sascha’s Designs, and I found some tap dancing animations from Abranimations. The only thing left was to find the right region to shoot in.

After looking at several regions, I found the 1920s – 1040s New York Time Zone at the Time Portal. I needed a night-time environment,but I also needed some additional light on my avatar. I ultimately used the 3 am environment setting that’s built into the Firestorm viewer, and the area in front of the Time Portal itself got enough light that I wasn’t dancing in the dark during the shoot. (That’s a Springsteen thing, after all.)

The camera work isn’t as smooth as I’d like, but I’m pretty happy with how my first machinima came out.

Credits
(Unless otherwise stated, links go to the item on the SL Marketplace)

Nanci Singin’ in the Rain
Shot by Nanci Barthelmess at Time Portal – 1920s – 1940s New York Time Zone (SLurl)
Windlight setting: Shared environment A-3AM
Music: Singin’ In The Rain by Gene Kelly (from Singin’ in the Rain (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack))

Nanci’s Body: Prima Busty (SLurl)
Hair: Stealthic – Mesmer
Tux: SAS – Shaz Tuxedo & Hat Glitter by Sascha’s Designs (NOTE: She’s wearing the Maitreya Lara version, not a Prima Busty version)
Umbrella: Junk Food – Rainy Umbrella (FLF page)
Shoes: -KC- NEDIS PUMPS by KC | Couture
Animations: Delected animations from the Mocap Tap Dance Animations from Abranimations

I finally have SolydK 12 installed

February 19, 2024

Last week I decided it was time to backup my laptop and have another go at installing SolydK 12. I installed it back in December but something was nomming hard drive space like there was no tomorrow so I quickly went back to SolydK 10. But I have SolydK 12 installed and I can finally run all sorts of shiny programs. The screenshot of my new desktop has a photo of Babe, my neighbor’s feline, that was taken in August.

SolydK is my preferred Linux distribution, and version 12 comes with Plasma version 5.27.5 and runs on Debian Bookworm. Among the programs I can finally run are the Calibre ebook reader version 6.13 and version 6.6.17.70368 of the Firestorm viewer for Second Life. Plus, I can finally run the brand-new beta of Firestorm version 7.1.3, which has the new PBR functionality of Second Life. No, it isn’t named for a can of beer, and it’s not codenamed Peanut Butter, although many of us do refer to it as Peanut Butter. It stands for physically based rendering, and rather than try to explain it myself, I’ll just let the always awesome Inara Pey tell you about it. But it does mean one thing I can explain quickly: Second Life has actual mirrors now! Granted, they’re not great mirrors as I write this, but they’re semi-functional mirrors. Yippee!!!!

As you can see from the sticky note in the desktop screenshot, I’m not having any unexplained hard drive space loss this time, and I’ve got my recording software reinstalled. I’ll be working with that in the coming days, especially since my new audio interface arrives on Tuesday. I’ll be writing a full article about that once I’ve started using it.

It’s getting late, and Babe is already letting me know it’s time for bed, so I’ll leave you with the images I made for this article. As my (admittedly arsehole) brother used to say, be good, and if you can’t, be good at it.

A screenshot of my new SolydK 12 desktop
Screenshot of the About this System page from KDE's System Settings app
A screenshot of Calibre 6.13
My Second life avatar, Nanci Barthelmess, in front of her new mirror in her home in in Second life

Srmstrong Park in Second Life. Photo from the Second life Destination guide.

Do you like to visit museums?

January 13, 2024

As I read this week’s edition of Highlights from the Second Life Destination Guide, I learned there are more museums in my favorite virtual world than I realized. I knew about the International Spaceflight Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the LGBTQ History Museum and Cultural Center, and Baltimore’s The Peale. But that barely scratches the surface of museums you can visit in Second Life with no admission fee beyond your internet connection and installing a free Second Life viewer (the client software for getting into SL). Plus, you can visit them at any hour of the day or night without having to worry about what you’re wearing. You can be dressed up, dressed down, in your jimjams, or even wearing nothing at all. As long as you’re not naked in Second Life, you will find a lot of places to visit that cover more subjects than many real-life cities have.

There’s even a virtual version of a public park and museum close to my heart from the city of my kittenhood. But alas, the virtual version doesn’t include The Treehouse, a former home of the best radio station in the entire multiverse.

Happy Old Year!

January 13, 2024

I meant to write a post for the end of 2023, but I didn’t get it finished to share it before the year ended. I have jury duty, and I finally got picked for a trial, so my time for doing things online is a lot leaner than it usually is. Still, I wanted to share a few things before we got too far into January 2024.

Sportsball

I’m still kind of amazed at the fact that my Bois en Bleu, the Los Angeles Dodgers, not only signed Shohei Ohtani but they also won the Yoshinobu Yamamoto lottery. They also got Tyler Glasnow and Manuel Margot, and Mookie Betts will be the regular second baseman in 2024. Unfortunately, between the new signings and the expected return of Gavin Lux, who spent 2023 on the IL recovering from a torn ACL, it looks like Kiké Hernádez won’t be back in Dodger Blue in 2024. Hopefully, his improved performance back in LA will help him get the contract he deserves.

The next cause of worry is super utility player Chris Taylor. If Miguel Rojas is the everyday starter at short and Teoscar Hernández is the everyday left fielder, CT3 could have to go back to riding the pine most of the season. Chris is always to contribute wherever he’s needed, but I’m disappointed that he’s back to being a backup instead of a starter.

And we still have to see what Clayton Kershaw is going to do. He isn’t as dominant as he used to be, and he’s been spending more time on the IL with each season. I hope he gives one more season to LA and doesn’t retire or, even worse, finish out his career in Texas. It’s rare to have a player spend their entire career with a single team, but seeing Kersh in another uniform would look even more weird than seeing Cody Bellinger in a Cubs uniform.

My Die-With-a-T

In the spring, I got referred to a new doctor who put me on the Mediterranean Diet. I quickly remembered a Garfield comic strip from the 70s where he called a diet “a die-wih-a-t.” I told my doctor that the things I would need to get at the grocery store for the diet are pretty expensive for someone on disability, and I was right. While I did pretty well on it for the first few months, but my budget got stretched so thin that it was hard to get the good food I should be eating all month. Grocery prices may still be going down, but it’s still hard to make sure I have decent food to eat all month, and I’ve noticed myself getting less nutritious food to complete menus for any given month. The fact that I’m still a fiend for good fried chicken doesn’t help.

Social Media

I thought I had found a great social media platform to use after Elon Musk bought (and trashed) the bird platform. After the attacks of 7 October, I discovered that my support of the civilians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank wasn’t very welcome there. I refuse to use any platform owned by Meta due to all the hate and BS, so I’m basically off of social media. It’s good though, because it freed up some time in my days for other things.

Second Life

I still need to reopen my virtual t-shirt store in Second Life, and I’m moving my real-life merchandise back to Spreadshirt this year. If you want to keep up with the happenings with my merch, you can keep an eye on things on the Nanci’s Naughties website. When I get my Spreadshop set back up, I’ll announce it there. With the war in the Gaza Strip expected to continue for several months, I’m considering adding the virtual posters I made to support the Palestinians to my real-world store. I really should have done that a few months ago, and I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to make money off the Palestinians’ suffering. I simply want to give people a way to show their support for people who are routinely treated like they’re poop that needs to be scraped off a person’s shoe.

As I wrote in May, I am the proud owner of a virtual bowling center in Second Life, the Pride Lanes Bowling Center. It’s not a very busy place, and I need to look at giving more folks reasons to visit. I tried using a machine to give out free Linden dollars (the currency in Second Life) to get people to go to the bowling center, but they only stayed around long enough to get paid. If you like to bowl in real life and you’re in Second Life, I hope you’ll head over to Pride Lanes and see how much fun bowling in Second Life can be You don’t even need to worry about renting bowling shoes, and I’ve even bowled in high heels without twisting an ankle or falling on my arse.

Kitties!

I’ve loved cats my whole life, but my budget is usually so tight that Abe Lincoln has gotten laryngitis from screaming so much. As a result, I haven’t felt I could be a good primary human to a feline. Earlier this year, my upstairs neighbor catsit for someone in the hospital, and Mr. Jack came down often to spend time in my half of the house. When Jack went back to his primary human, my neighbor realized he really liked cats after always preferring dogs. One of my neighbor’s friends heard there was a pair of abandoned kittens in New York, and the kitties moved in upstairs. It was a brother and sister, Tommy and Babe, but Tommy got too aggressive, so he had to go to a new home. It worked out better because Tommy thrives in his new home, and is loved by everyone in his new building.

I’ve become Babe’s “aunt,” and she’s gotten the run of the entire place. She comes down several times daily to see what’s happening downstairs, and I spoil her with treats and toys from time to time. Her primary human doesn’t have a climbing toy upstairs, so I built her a cat condo from cardboard boxes. She now has several places to get a nap, and she loves having a maze and a higher place to sit.

I’ve started posting some videos of Babe to my YouTube channel, and I have a video of her getting introduced to snow that I need to get online. Many felines like the snow, but Babe isn’t one of them. I was surprised at how fast she turned around when she got off the porch.

Music

As I said in May, I started working on a pair of songs I had written years ago. Life got in the way, and neither song has a demo recorded. I finally worked on the second song again last month, and the chord progression for the song’s intro reminds me of the solo section of Del Shannon’s Runaway. The melodies are very different, but the underlying chord progressions are similar. I hope I can share it before it’s time to celebrate Pride Month.

My computer

Last month, I did something terrible to my computer and had to do a clean install of SolydK Linux. I’m not saying what I did because I’m not sure what I did, but I was losing available disk space at a prodigious speed. Having to do a clean install of my daily work computer wasn’t a great thing to have to do, especially since I had to get into Second Life every day to get goodies from advent calendars.

I finally reinstalled some software to record demos of my music, but I still need to get fully set up for recording. The plan is to write an article on what I installed once I have something musical to share with it. I still need to get some gear to make proper recordings, but with my tight budget, I plan on seeing what my current setup can do. I’m going to see if I can use my Fender Mustang Micro headphone amp and my phone to record some guitar tracks. I miss making music, both from the creative and production sides. I was a recording engineer when I lived in New Orleans, but it was hard to get a job at a studio with all the students in Boston when I moved up here in 1989.

What does 2024 have in store?

I hope I can be even more productive in 2023 than I was in 2023. Once the trial I’m on the jury for finishes, I’ll be able to create a decent working routine. I hope to give you more reasons to visit My Two Lives in the coming year. There is a whole heap of question marks ahead of us between the US elections, the war in Palestine, and life’s seeming predisposition to throw more on our plates than we thought we could handle. Remember, you’re better than you think you are. You’re worth more than you think you are. You’re more loved and appreciated than you probably know. The more the haters want to put you down, the higher the possibility that they’re trying to keep you from knowing the full value of your being on this planet.

I have pretty being busy lately

May 15, 2023

Some links below are affiliate links. If you buy anything from these links I may receive a commission on your purchase.

I haven’t posted anything here in quite a while, but that hasn’t meant I haven’t been doing anything. After getting new web hosting from Namecheap, I moved My Two Lives to a different product within the Namecheap family. The new product allows hosting for not only My Two Lives but also my Second Life store, Nanci’s Naughties, and due to having way too much on my plate, I just got Nanci’s Naughties back up this week.

Sports!

Some people know of my love for tenpin bowling, but I haven’t visited a bowling center since I was in Guam with the Air Force in 1987. Being on a fixed income makes visiting a bowling center in Boston difficult financially, so in March I decided to see what options are available for virtual bowling in Second Life. I found the Bergson Bowling System, which does more than let me bowl inworld. It also lets people lay out lanes for their own use.

Rather than just setting up a lane for myself, I created a bowling center anyone could use. It’s the Pride Lanes Bowling Center, and you can find out more about it at PrideLanesSL.online. Pride Lanes has a tent at this year’s Second Pride, and I’m working on some merch that will connect Nanci’s Naughties, Pride Lanes, Second Pride, and global LGBTQ+ life. Once it’s available I’ll announce it over on the Nanci’s Naughties website.

I’m making music again

When I bought my Squire Stratocaster back in 2020, I knew I wanted to work on an original song I got the idea for in a practice room at the Longy School of Music back in 1996. It started as a cool riff with a soul gospel feel, and it became a whole bluesy song in late 1999, but it’s more of a guitar song than a keyboard song, so it just got tucked away in my proverbial drawer. When I got my Strat, I knew I wanted to develop the song, and last year I started working on a demo for the song. The demo still isn’t finished because I never get enough time for playing my guitar, but now that I’m getting things off my plate I hope to get back to working on that soon.

Early this year I was thinking of a Christian rock song I wrote in the early naughts. As an ex-vangelical I won’t use the lyrics anymore, but I love the music I came up with for it, so I’m going to put together a demo on BandLab. I’ll publish the song on BandLab for someone to write new lyrics for and use. Of course, there’s not enough time in the day to do everything, and my brain can play the guitar a hell of a lot better than my fingers can, so it’s another song that’s going to be a work in progress for a while.

Et cetera

There are many things going on in my life that I won’t talk about here, and with warmer weather arriving in Boston I hope to spend more time outside this summer, even if it’s just out on my porch. Yes, I’m a big old homebody, so I tend to stick around Château Hardin unless I have to make groceries, run an errand or five, or go the medico folks. But that works pretty well for me since I’m also a huge night owl, and I’m usually going to bed when the morning news folks are getting up. There are also days when I’ve kicked myself because the sun is going down as I’m going to bed, but the only problem there is that by the time I get up I’ve missed most of the daytime.

I’m going to leave you with a meme posted by someone last year on a social media platform I used to use. It’s something I need to remind myself of every now and then, and I’m not the only one who needs it.