John Ratcliff's Weblog

My blog is loosely connected to my camera. If I don't remember to take pictures then, for practical purposes, it didn't actually happen. My memory remains somewhat porous and photographs continue to be an excellent reminder. I just returned from a business trip that lasted almost two weeks. I took the day today off of work to recuperate from the whole event, get caught up on things at home, and readjust from jet leg. I'm not entirely sure I ever got myself properly time shifted when I was in Europe. I woke up so many times during the night each evening that I think I was still psychologically here in Saint Louis. I will get back to the topic of my business trip, but not before I get up to date with the sporadic photographs I found in my digital camera when I transferred them today. According to the camera the last thing that happened to me is that I attended a Halloween party at our neighbor’s house. Diane and Lenny Brown threw a great costume party the weekend before Hallo...

Wow, I'm doing a terrible job web-logging. I still haven't recorded (even for my own benefit) all of the stuff I did this summer. Weeks and months go by with few updates. I feel guilty when I visit my friends blogs and find out about their latest little misadventures and have failed to reciprocate. Here I find ten free minutes to post and this rambling incoherent message will have to suffice for a few more weeks. First of all, the big life changes. I am still dieting. I have lost 30 pounds to date. I look better and feel better. In this effort I have quit drinking. And I mean that in an absolute way. Not a drop of alcohol has touched my lips in over three months. There have been some serious temptations along the way. Like the playoffs and world series games. Parties at neighbors where I just couldn't bring myself to break my alcohol fast. So, while everyone else partied and had fun, I was a stick in the mud; going home to be early. In Toronto at a busin...

Wow, get ready for dissapointment... First of all, I will not be geting Lasik eye-surgury. I had my pre-op exam yesterday and was informed I was not a good candidate. My vision is -8.5 diapters and my cornea isn't thick enough for the surgury. Apparently they would have to laser off so much of my eye to get it to focus I wouldn't have much left. Yeah...that sounds real good. They have another version of the surgury that I am supposedly qualified for called PK. However, in this scenario they just laser off the top of your eyeball and let it heal. It is painful, has a long recovery period, and has to be done one eye at a time over the course of many weeks. Blech, thanks, but no thanks. So, it's back to contact lenses and glasses for the rest of my life. Now, about London. I won't be going to London. The busisness trip involves a group of people scattered all over the world. We all voted on the date and place. Then, the main people organizing it just unil...

Just a brief post. First of all, I am reading my friend David Metzener's weblog and he is doing a great job keeping up with the election news with great links and commentary. Over the weekend, let's see, what did I do. On Saturday I attended the High School band competition in Washington, Missouri to watch my daugher compete. On Sunday our company got tickets to Six Flags for all of the employee's and their family. The park was closed to the public and the kids could ride every ride in the park, over and over again, without any lines. So they did. Me, I don't do amusement park rides, I just hiked around the park and got my exercise. Yesterday I took my kids out of school and took them down to the Cardinals first division series playoff game. It was unbelievable! The Cardinals rocked the Dodgers with five home runs! My kids had a fantastic time and were very appreciative. I'm taking my friend David Whatley to game two tomorrow evening. I want us to win a world ...

The title of this post is "The $10 Italian Suit". I know I promised myself a new Italian suit when I lost sixty pounds, but today I met a milestone of finally losing twenty. As coincidence would have it, I found an Italian suit at a garage sale for the lordly value of ten bucks. I decided to take a photo of the suite and post it on the site. However, this just got me thinking about all the photographs I have taken in 2004. I ended up reviewing the photos I have, cropping them, and uploading them to my website. These photos are without context and have little meaning if you don't know the people in them. However, I *do* know the people in them, and they have meaning for me. Over the coming weeks I will annotate the photos with comments. I will also deliver on my personal promise of documentation, even if only in bullet fashion, our summer activities. This evening I am heading out to Phil Steinberg's to watch "Fiddler on the Roof" in his home theatre, as part ...