Hud and Viv in front of my favorite building in the whole world.

See that building?  That's the beautiful Sheridan Opera House...and I don't work there anymore.
It's been a week and I still can barely wrap my head around it.  On the night of my final performance, the wonderful SAF staff surprised me with a slideshow with photos of me from the beginning to the end of my 17 year run.  It was so special and meaningful I still can't even think about it without crying. Sigh....Thank you, Opera House and the people who work there.  I love you to the moon and back.

So what now? I'll tell you what...I JUST JUMPED ON THE SUPER-HIGHWAY OF EXTREME LEARNING!!  The very next day after leaving my job I emcee'd for the Mountainfilm Festival for three days, and I found myself right back in my good old Opera House, interviewing filmmakers on the very stage I had just left. I introduced 31 films, met dozens of filmmakers, and LEARNED SO MUCH.  Holy moly, did I learn.  I learned about Syrian refugees and how climate change effects political instability, and about the pollution of the Ganges River, and about brilliant yo-yo artists and about dead pets. My brain exploded about 800 times during the weekend.  As an emcee, there were highs and lows.  At one point I forgot the word for hyphen as I read a web address out loud and I stammered and struggled and then said, "you know, that small horizontal line?" Jeez.  And another time after a river film I merrily shouted out, "Didn't that movie make you want to go camping RIGHT NOW?" And the audience was absolutely silent. I'm squirming now just thinking about it.  I also forgot a film title once and the audience had to remind me. Ughhhhhhhhhh.  (The rest of it went really well but the epic fails are funnier so I had to mention them).

And THEN, the very next day after Mountainfilm, I began a 3 day Wilderness First Aid and CPR course.  And AGAIN, my brain exploded with all of the new info.  You GUYS!  I can bandage!  I can splint!  I know what shock is and how to treat it!  Do you have a some kind of gross, infected cut?  I totally know how to fix it.  Kaboom!!!!

Next up on the learning adventure: diesel engine repair and how to take better pics on my Iphone.

This post was all about me, sorry about that.  Next time I'm going to write all about Hud and Viv and Trav, I promise.

Oh, and my smart sister fixed our blog so it's easy to find how to follow it.  There's a button to click on the home page near the top, so please follow us.  Thanks so much for reading!!!      

I love lists.  I REALLY love to-do lists.  I have a notebook of lists that I keep with me at all times that is filled with lists of things I want to do, things I should do, things I have to do.  Crossing things off lists is like a drug to me.  Trav is the same.  We are List Geeks.

As Trav and I prepare for our sailing adventure, we would keep thinking of things we need to do and then immediately forgetting them and saying to each other, "What was that really important thing we should do right away?  I JUST said it, what was it?!?"  After that happened a few times we we realized we needed to have a really big, really visual to-do list to keep us on track.  There is SO much we need to do, and other families we have read about who have left their homes and jobs to go sailing usually take 2-3 years to plan and organize themselves.  The Julia Family has 9 months until we leave Telluride and one single jam-packed year until we set sail.  Can we do it? Well, yes of course we can.  (Positivity is power, baby.)

So here's our giant to-do list.  It's a year-long timeline, decorated with waves (my amatuer artistry) mounted on a vintage map of the world.  We hung it on the wall of a big landing on our stairwell and we all walk by it about 1,000 times per day.  Notice that at the top it says "Giant War Map"-- it was produced during WWII so people could keep track of battles.  Since we are hippie pacifists, I prefer to think of our map as a war on time slipping by.

So what's on our to-do list these days?  Well, there's crazy-big stuff like "BUY A SAILBOAT" and "RENT OUR HOUSE".  There's little stuff like "DOWNLOAD BOOKS, MUSIC, MOVIES FROM LIBRARY" and "SELL GEAR AT SKI-SWAP".  There's stuff we don't feel like doing like "MOUSE-PROOF OWNER'S CLOSET".  And there's really fun stuff like "MAKE AMAZON WISH LIST AND SHARE WITH FAMILY MEMBERS".  There's also a lot of exciting/daunting/interesting things on the list such as "LEARN PHOTOGRAPHY", "LEARN HOW TO CUT HAIR, "TAKE WILDERNESS FIRST AID COURSE", "LEARN DIESEL ENGINE REPAIR" and "MASTER THE UKELELE".  Does it sound to you like we're going to be busy over the next year?

Two of the sticky notes on the map that I think are the most important are at the top, in the center.  They read, "LIVE IN THE MOMENT" and "ENJOY TELLURIDE".  With all of this planning, dreaming, and excitement for the future, it might be easy to lose sight of the here and now, and we are determined not to do that.  After all, it's not like we're going sailing to run away from lives we don't like. We LOVE our lives here, and we're committed to living this year to the fullest, doing Telluride right.  That's why we also added to the list, "MAKE TELLURIDE *FUN* CHECKLIST."  Do you see what we did there?  We added "MAKE A LIST" to our list. That's what I'm talking about...List Geeks.