Friday, December 30, 2011

What I learned in 2011

Each year, for the past couple of years, I've looked back to see what insights I have gained over the last 12 months. Every day and situation is certainly a learning opportunity; it's up to me what I choose to do with it. Here are a few things I believe I've learned or had reinforced this year:

Giving and kind acts beget more giving and kind acts.

Sitting court-side in Arthur Ashe Stadium at the US Open finals is very, very cool.

A great Buffett concert in a world landmark is worth flying 14 hours in Coach - and back 13 hours in 1st Class.  Over a weekend.

Spending time with our Danish relatives makes the world that much smaller.  And that much better.

There just might be a Jimmy Buffett lyric for every situation.

Good health and being pain-free can never be overrated.

If you don't A.S.K., you don't G.E.T when it comes to fundraising.

Stove top popcorn is still the best.

My family and friends are amazingly generous of time, spirit, love and resources.

Spending time with a 3 year old expands your imagination and makes you laugh a lot.

I love watching my nephew play water polo and win championships.

Being a good patient really does lead to faster recovery - do what the doctor says.

My husband is very, very funny and very sweet (okay, I knew that already).

Pathways to Independence has taken root in my heart.

Traveling in the Middle East is easier than it sounds and absolutely fascinating.

A Jeroboam isn't so hard to open.

FaceBook remains an excellent way to stay in touch, communicate and expand charitable works.

Paso Robles wine continues to impress, from Ecluse to Daou and I love going there, sharing it with friends.

Cancer is not fair.  It can strike an otherwise healthy, active, hiking and ice-dancing 76 year old and a lively, brilliant, bungee jumping, world traveling, 23 year old engineering student.

Winning awards is fun, especially when an iPad and a free vacation is included.

Adding fiber to your diet is important.

Not everything that happens needs to be posted on Facebook.

Friday assistants are important.

Always take the Bear Valley cutoff, don't go straight on the 18 to the 15. Ever.

John's Burgers has the best turkey burgers and Carino's in La Jolla is still the best (standard) pizza on the planet.

Love is a 3 year old in your arms who just melts into you.

10 years later, my memories of 9/11 can still bring me to tears.

There is always more to do.

We live close enough to the beach to hear the fog horns (that's what I'm hearing as I type).

Flossing daily is a good habit to get in to.

A grateful heart is a happy heart.

Being kind is always the best choice.

I am blessed, but that's another one I already knew...

Bring on 2012, I'm ready to learn more!

Thursday, December 8, 2011

A Year in the Life 2011

This is our holiday letter for the year, although with the overexposure on Facebook they are hardly needed anymore. Nevertheless, for those technically challenged or who just haven't had enough of the Larsons this year, here's the recap:

A Year in the Life 2011: Cameron and Katie Larson

Yes, even though we’re on Facebook and email, I’m still writing one of these letters. They are probably destined for a museum, but if you will indulge me, I’ll write this one and see where we are a year from now. Didn’t I say that last year?

January: The height of indulgence here – we fly to Sydney, Australia, to see Jimmy Buffett perform (for the 25th and 35th times) at the Sydney Opera House, introducing friends Peter and Elizabeth Horscroft to the Parrothead lifestyle. An amazing trip and concert. We also hosted Danish cousin Steffen and his friend Taus on their week stopover between New Zealand and Denmark.

February: Cameron gears up for a big project at work and one of us turns 54. We take in a Lakers game, with a UA customer. Cam’s dad celebrates his 90th birthday.

March: A trip to Atlanta for Katie to visit Stephanie Fager and a knee surgery. We demolish the hall bathroom. Niece McKenna Kimbell gets into the groove of spending Fridays with Aunt KK as her Friday assistant. Katie interviews for her job as United and Continental move closer in their merger and combine sales forces.

April: We celebrate 12 years of marriage with a Segway tour on the beach and a boat load of friends enjoying fine wine together. Katie gets in a quick work trip to New York and Cam is an integral part of the Gas Co. work on a Public Utilities Commission report. Katie signs on with the ‘new’ UA to continue her job. The family joins us at the Larson Lodge for Easter.

May: Vacation? Please! 4 days on the Big Island of Hawaii with a magical night time scuba dive with manta rays. The month ends with the United sales conference and Katie winning “Outstanding Sales Achievement” award which includes a trophy, extra vacation days, a vacation (flights and hotel) and an iPad.

June: Cam gets some golf in, work on our 2nd bathroom remodel continues. Jayne Schultz comes to visit and our house gets tented. Summer water polo season starts for Jackson.

July: Katie gears up for Pathways to Independence fundraiser work and makes a quick trip to Jackson, WY, to visit a new account. Hall bath completed after 4 months of work. We attend a few Dodger games (Dug Out Club) with United and Cameron hits his mid-50’s.

August: “Friday assistant”/niece McKenna turns 3 and the Danes are back again – Elin and Bjarne come to visit for a week and we celebrate cousin Dave Alpert’s 60th and Alperts’ 35th wedding anniversary with a party. Daughter Anna turns 26, living and working in the Washington, D.C. area; niece Christine is 30 and Katie heads back to Houston for more training with the new UA in 100+ degree weather.

September: Jackson turns 17 and high school water polo season starts. My dad is 79, still in good health. We escort UA customers to the Women’s Final of the US Open –courtside! - and we are in NYC for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Another Emmy Nominee reception where I ask ‘Claire Dunphy’ to please hand me a napkin. Stephanie Fager comes to visit and we take her to Paso Robles to celebrate her 50th birthday and enjoy the wine.

October: My mom turns 76 and the Pathways to Independence fundraiser raises $310K – the most ever. Son Eric turns 23 years old, living in Rochester, NY. We celebrate the engagement of cousin Darin and his bride-to-be, Alex, then Cameron and I embark on an amazing trip to Israel which included Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Eilat, scuba diving in Egypt and a day in Petra, Jordan. And 500+ photos to go through.

November: The big event this month was Jackson and his Wilson High water polo team winning the Division 2 CIF Championship. Very exciting and we’re all so proud of his achievements as he also maintains a 4.0+ GPA. Talented, smart and good looking – like his aunt. We attended a couple winning UCLA Bruin football games, as well as Phi Delta Theta, Sigma Kappa and Rieber Hall reunions. Debra Gurriere visited on her way to and from the Sigma Kappa reunion in Palm Springs.

December: For the second year we started the month with a trip to Austin to visit Jayne Schultz and Christian Wildfeuer. Jackson is awarded CIF Player of the Year, the highest athletic honor in high school sports. We host a customer at a UCLA basketball game one day, followed by hosting another the next day at the San Diego- Buffalo NFL football game. The 5th annual Holiday Hygge event is held at the Larson Lodge. We celebrate Christmas, again, in Long Beach, Orange, Placentia, San Dimas and Big Bear.

We look forward to an exciting 2012, with hopes for good health, good travels and good times with family and friends.
Cameron and I wish you all a healthy, happy, and love-filled 2012. See you on Facebook (Cameron Alan Larson and Katie Kimbell Larson) or email

Friday, September 9, 2011

A Day Like Any Other, 10 years ago


I wrote this entry last September 11th and Brian Grigory asked if I would post it again. I had been thinking about it, but wasn't sure. Brian's comment had me pull it up again and revisit. Now that I read it again, another year past and tears still falling, I shall post.

Strangely, I will be in New York City on the 10th anniversary of September 11th. I don't know if I'll go to Ground Zero. There is a lot going on that day, including escorting customers to the rescheduled Women's Final of the US Open, the whole reason we're going to New York this weekend. I might get to see Allison, daughter of Kristin White Gould, while we're there. I hope so.

September 11, 2001, changed me. I think it made me a kinder person, a more giving person; I think it made me focus on what's important in life and what is just stuff. No, I don't get it right all the time - I still screw up - but I know that day changed me, through the horror and tragedy, a little bit to the good.

*****************************
It was a Tuesday morning and I was facilitating a class on Applied Behavioral Science - teaching supervisors of flight attendants how to get the best performance from their teams. We had supervisors from Boston, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco with us.

We were covering a section on managing through irregular operations when someone threw open the classroom door and excitedly blurted out, "Two planes have hit the World Trade Center!" The class turned expectantly to me, thinking this was part of the exercise in dealing with the unexpected. I was confused.

"Come!" the person said, "It's on the TV!" My co-facilitator and I agreed that we wouldn't be able to continue until we sorted this out, so we all filed out, hushed and excited voices hubbubbing about what it could be. We gathered around the TV set in the lounge area of the training center. Then a buzz started somewhere..."it's one of ours"...."it could be one of ours..." "what if it's one of ours???"

A manager came around the corner and went straight to the supervisor from Boston. UA175 from Boston was confirmed as one of the planes. These were HER flight attendants on board, her friends, our colleagues. She was led away, arrangements to be made to get her to Boston as soon as possible.

I left the group and went up to the 8th floor of the building, where the managers were. We were all part of the emergency response team and needed to decide who would go where, and when. One facilitator was pacing around, shouting out gibberish about pulling people back into class, using this as a real-life experience in dealing with the unexpected. He was new to the airlines. He didn't understand.

I decided to drive to our Chicago Reservations office, the emergency response team's headquarters in case of... I found a couple other people downstairs who were headed there and off we went. Once there, there was controlled anxiety and we were assigned rooms. "Go into that classroom and sit. We will be with you as soon as possible."

The room I was assigned was where I would spend the next 10 days, in 12 hour shifts once we got through that first day, which was endless. I was in the room assigned to 'handle' Flight 93, which was missing at the time we first went into the room. A director came into the room and confirmed that UA93 had gone down in a field in western Pennsylvania. She had the manifest and they went row by row, assigning us names of passengers. Crew members were being handled by a team from Onboard Service, by those who knew and worked with them.

"Katie, you have Mark Bingham. He was on a companion pass, so we have some information on him. We'll get that to you." Ziad Jarrah and Ahmed Haznawi were assigned, as well. Lauren Grandcolas, Todd Beamer, Nicole Miller, Honor Waino, ...We ran out of people in the room and I was also assigned Kristin White Gould.

We only had names, so we waited. We talked in quiet tones, we shared where we were, what we knew, what we had seen. The room was full of United colleagues, most of whom I'd not met before. We were all there for the same reason. We were going to reach out to the families to tell them that their loved ones were on UA93, that they were gone.

I don't talk about this day, nor the 9 that followed it. I know I was a completely different person when I walked out of that room around midnight on September 11th than I was when I got up that morning. Perhaps I should have taken a picture of who I was that morning to see if she resembled the woman I was that night.

The next 9 days consisted of phone calls with the Bingham and Gould families. My contact with the Binghams was Mark's mother and aunt, both UA flight attendants. Mark had been on his aunt's companion passes. Mark was one of the team who rushed the cockpit and brought down the plane. When I called Mark's mother to tell her he was on the plane, she told me she knew - he had called her. Others were hearing similar stories and that's when we found out about the phone calls, the actions, the heroes of flight 93. Those of us who had passengers who made the calls heard heartbreaking tales from their families.

Kristin's daughter Allison and I spoke daily, several times a day. I had to ask her detailed questions to, hopefully, identify her mother's body or, in truth, what we might find. We requested DNA evidence from the families - hair dumped out of a shaver, a toothbrush, a hair brush...

Coming to work every day for those 12 hours was living in an alternate universe. The office is right next to O'Hare and there were no airplanes in the sky. My world was helping Allison, helping Mark's mother, father, step-mother, boyfriend and the man who drove him to the airport that morning. Giving them information, getting information, setting up funeral arrangements and just talking with them through this nightmare.

I keep a folder on that time and I haven't opened it in a few years until now. There is a card written by Allison the day after her mother's memorial service, September 29, 2001. Cameron and I flew out for the service and to meet the family I had come to know over the phone.

"I pray God gives you the strength not to dwell on this horrible accident. You have touched every last member of my family. You've been our guardian angel with a soft feather mattress that cushions us and has softened the blow through these past three weeks."

In the last 9 years Allison and I have stayed in touched, we've visited each other a couple of times, but time goes by. She doesn't know she was my guardian angel and we helped each other. That's the two of us in my FaceBook profile photo, taken on a trip we did to San Francisco. I call her every September 11th, as well.

I didn't think I could cry over this any more. I was wrong.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Life Really is a Buffett Lyric Part 1


"Changes in latitude, changes in attitude..."
I'll start by saying I am lucky. I am blessed. I am fortunate. I've made [mostly] good choices in life. Let me tell you about last weekend...

Friday Janauary 21st we both worked a full day, we fixed a little dinner and then packed our suitcases. We were heading out to Oz that evening. The flight had looked promising two weeks ago, with 1st or Business Class assured. It had fallen apart this week and we packed for coach, if we got on at all - Cam took his pillow and I threw in a Snuggie, eye shades, ear plugs and some Tylenol PM.

Arriving about 90 minutes before flight we relaxed in the International First Class Lounge. I send lots of customers up there and we got to try the product out and give some feedback to the manager (thanks Shelley and Ruby!). Ruby was working the lounge and told us it looked very bad to get on the flight, that we were not likely to get out tonight. In my head I was going through the schedule to Hawaii the next morning, as we'd packed tropical clothes...

"Still six thousand miles away from where I'd really rather be"
At the gate, 30 minutes before departure, we could see there were 4 seats left on the flight, in coach, and we were #2-3 on the list. Ruby came to tell us the 4 seats would be going out empty, as there were weight restrictions (typical this time of year). 22 years of flying stand-by have taught me you *never* leave the gate until the airplane pushes back.


Good things don't always come to those who wait, but tonight they did. "Larson, party of 2" was called and we were given seats 45J and 33J, middle seats but exit rows at aircraft doors, so about 4 feet of leg room in front of us. The flight is scheduled at 14 hours and 35 minutes. We made it to Sydney in 13 hours and 20 minutes and I slept at least 7 of those hours. No photos were taken, but I'm sure I was the envy of all in coach with my UCLA snuggie, my high-end eye shades and my ear plugs. When I awoke the woman next to me started and said "I thought you were dead!" Why, thank you, I did have a nice sleep! Cam fared almost as well in his seat with his pillow from our bed.

"The weather is here"
Coming out of Customs about 10 minutes after we got off the plane, we looked around for our friend Peter who said he might pick us up if we weren't in too early. As we were in more than an hour early, we didn't see him. A quick stop at the ATM and we turned toward the train into the city. I stopped Cam and said let's take one more look around for Peter and there he was!

Peter and wife Elizabeth had just returned from 2 weeks in Tahiti the day before. He drove us to our hotel, where it was to early to get in. We decided to stop for a coffee while we waited for Elizabeth to get up and stopped in the Park Hyatt. Enjoying a beautiful flat white, the first since I was last in Sydney in November 2009, I looked up to see a familiar man walking in the restaurant. It was Jimmy Buffett.

"I heard I was in town"
Spending so much of my job protecting celebrities from fans and paparazzi and looking like we'd just gotten off a 14 hour flight, I wasn't about to go over. But Peter did!

Peter went over to tell Mr. Buffett that Cameron and I had just flown in to see his concert the next night and that we were going back on Tuesday. That we were seeing Jimmy for the 25th (Cameron) and 35th (me) time. Yes, indeed, we had flown to Sydney for the Jimmy Buffett concert at the Sydney Opera House.

Mr. Buffett was gracious, explained that he was doing an interview and would be over to say hello once he was done. Elizabeth joined us a few minutes later and we sat as long as we could, but left before Mr. Buffett finished his interview. Yes, we are fans. Big fans who have seen him in California, Washington, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado and Hawaii. Big fans who just flew halfway around the planet to see him, but we are not stalkers. No, we are not. Nope. Just one little photo with the BlackBerry camera and the satisfaction of knowing we had made the journey and been rewarded with good friends, a flat white and sharing the restaurant with Jimmy.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

What I learned in 2010

Last year I posted a note on Facebook titled "What I learned in 2009". I'm taking a look back today to see what I learned in 2010:

Dancing with a two year old is good for anything that ails you.

It's okay to not give to every charity that asks and not have to explain nor feel guilty about it.

My husband is my best friend, as well as my lover, my partner, my roommate, my co-chef, co-host, confidante, sounding board, reality check and one of the funniest people I know.

Spending more time on your BlackBerry/iPhone/Droid/computer than talking with the ones you're physically with is, actually, quite rude.

Sometimes love isn't enough and we have to know when to stop trying and let go.

Texting only at stop lights and during slow traffic still isn't a good idea.

Clients are clients 100% of the time and only really, truly friends about 1% of the time.

Skype is a great way to keep friends and family close, and I should use it more.

There is a heck of a lot of nothing between Tucson and Austin.

I can learn current music by watching "Glee".

Traveling with other couples and sharing a house can be really fun, especially when cooking and wine pairing are involved.

Giving our elite flyers free domestic upgrades has altered where I sit in the airplane.

I am only 13.5 months away from the senior discount at the Edwards Cinema. (WTH?@$%#%#@!)

Apologizing, no matter whose fault it is, doesn't make me weak; it's not saying it that does.

Wine touring and tasting continue to fascinate me, whether it's in Spain, Paso or a new wine at the Larson Lodge.

There is still room for new friends in my life (Lora, Liz, Greg, Pat, Larry, Holly, Libby...).

A merger is a scary thing, no matter how much you're told it's a good thing. It very well may be a great thing, but it's still scary.

I am really good at organizing a project and making it successful.

A good fitting bra cannot be underestimated nor overrated.

Our parents are aging and they can be fragile; we need to keep them close and let them know how much we love and appreciate them.

Traveling with friends is not always a good idea.

I can watch "Finding Nemo" four times in one day if a two year old asks me to.

Watching a high school water polo team lose a big game can make me cry and my heart ache.

My family, on the whole, is pretty great.

Every day, no matter what happens, I am blessed and so amazingly lucky.