Stephanie Marie

While getting ready for the snowstorm of the century set to hit the Tar Heel state, I realized I had not updated my gaming list in a year. I wrote an unusual post about computer games that fit my feminine personality well. Note that many of my selections do not necessarily have female characters. I love Tomb Raider as much as the next person, but I do not think most buy it to admire Lara Croft's sparkling personality. I like my games to be a little deeper, a little more involved, and if it involves a pretty girl, so be it. So here's my recent list. Note that not all of these have been released in the past year. I have at least one game on my hard drive I play regularly that is twenty years old. If a game has staying power with me, then I will keep it. rFactor (2005, Image Space Incorporated) is not only one of the best PC racing games of all time. It might be the best direct download ever too. A road course racer at heart, rFactor was designed from the ground up with a mod fri...

The above title may seem appropriate for most of the nation as winter has truly arrived. Here in the not so deep south, the thermometer will plunge below 10 degrees. Talk about brrrrrrrr! Fortunately no snow or ice, but that is the coldest in aboout four years for the Charlotte, NC area. I have a good online reenacting friend from Wisconsin who is laughing at us silly southerners quite hard right now. At least, we'll make it back above freezing this weekend. I have jokes with many friends that I like to watch Lawrence of Arabia the coldest night of the year. Makes me feel a lot warmer! Well I did just that tonight. I'm sure I'll finish tomorrow night. With all the extra time at home due to unemployment, I've spent a bit of it rearranging my apartment in addition to sending out resumes and making phone calls. For many years, I had a bad habit of setting gifts aside and not looking at them for maybe as much as a couple of years. We've all gotten the odd article of clo...

I hope everyone is enjoying a happy and safe start to their new year. I am among many who were glad to say good bye to 2008. Despite the lack of posts, I have been fairly busy including unfortunately joining the ranks of the unemployed. If anyone needs a good video producer,I'm your woman, or man, or whatever! Yes, I get confused too. I've had the honor of meeting Elke Kennedy of Sean's Last Wish and getting to know her a little bit over the past year. Her story of resilience in the face of unspeakable tragedy is an inspiration to all who hear her story. I have written about the murder of Sean Kennedy and the unjustly short sentence given to his murderer, Stephen Moller. I put to you the following request from Elke: Sean Kennedy's family will never see justice done for Sean. Because of the inadequacy of South Carolina murder laws and the lack of hate crime statutes, his killer, Stephen Andrew Moller, could be out of prison as early as February. We must protest this inj...

I hope everyone has been enjoying the cool fall weather and the colorful leaves. This is one of the times I really enjoy apartment living watching everyone rake up their leaves. I love the explosion of color, but I detest cleaning up the fallen leaves. I must admit most everyone in my town has done a beautimous job in keeping their yards clean. A good friend recently asked me about my reencting schedule and other appearances. My goal for 2009 is to have a full slate of Pride shows and other activities on the slate. I enjoyed so much the Pride Charlotte and Southern Comfort presentations that I'd like to expand as much as time allows. A lot of this will be dependent on my work schedule and my application to a local reenacting group. Once I start confirming events, I will put up a schedule someplace on this blog My ideal situation is a combination of mainstream and GLBT events. I feel a desire to work in both arenas. The mainstream events give me an opportunity to grow in that world...

A big thank you to everyone who attended my seminar, TG Adventures in History, at the Southern Comfort Convention this year! That was my first presentation at SCC, and I was pleased with the good turnout (about a dozen) for a 9am start. I know history may not be the most exciting subject at that hour, but it was a true pleasure to be surrounded by people who enjoy studying all aspects of our past. The best thing was all the ideas for reading material and transgender related topics. It meant so much for the attendees to share their experiences with me. I was particularly moved by the lady who says that this is my "reality" versus being a "dream." Those who read my blog know that is a big deal for me. That is a big part of the magic of SCC... hearing everyone's stories. From the bottom of my heart, thank you! Once again, I volunteered with the tech crew at SCC. Due to my work schedule, I missed all of the fun setup work ;) I heard it went fairly well with the grea...

Something that the religious world is quite familiar with is the idea that one must be a committed to a certain philosophy in order to be right with God. These are sometimes called "chosen sects." Anyone who has not understood or applied a particular principle is not consider "saved" according to these sects' belief system. Even if this person has been devout and committed all their life, none of this matters to the "chosen one" if he/she has not accepted a way of thinking partiular to the group. One example I will give was my time with the International Church of Christ (sometimes called the Boston Movement in the 80's) in my college years at UNC-Chapel Hill. Like many so called fundamentalist groups, they believed they had the key to salvation due to a literal interpretation of the Bible. In Bible studies with potential recruits, church members were trained to dismiss any past Christian experience of the recruit. If one area of non conformance wi...