John Ratcliff's Weblog

Ok, I'm tired of Paris. I'm homesick and ready to come home. I worked all day yesterday and then decided, at the last minute, that I had to 'do something'. Since I arrived I have had the romantic notion that I would go to see an Opera in Paris but, apparently, there is no opera playing until December. In desperation I decided, on the spur of the moment, to go to the "Moulin Rouge". I have no idea what I was thinking, because it was just a waste of my time and money. Now, don't get me wrong. There is nothing particularily 'wrong' with the Moulin Rouge, so long as you like big Las Vegas style dance show productions. Now, I like dance, but my taste runs a litte more along the lines Twyla Tharp, not small chested topless girls with giant feathered hats. Now, I suppose I 'knew' this is what it was going to be, but it just wasn't a good way to spend the evening. Had I been there with my wife I think it would have been more fun. The

Well, here it is Saturday morning. I have now been in Paris for one full week. It feels so much shorter than that. The time has been flying by! I have been making good progress with the work I was sent out here to do. The office I am in is very nice and the people are very friendly. I think I commented previously that Parisians 'look miserable'. This is simply not the case. They are just in a hurry to get somewhere. My wife often complains how fast I walk and leave her unable to catch up. Here in Paris I am constantly mowed down by people walking at something just short of a jog. The Parisian lifestyle is amazing. And, I have been living it for the past week. Having a coffee in the morning, showing up at the office at 10am, working till about 1pm. Around 1pm the office often goes to lunch together, choosing one of the seven trillion resturants in a four block radius. Lunch is leisurly and a great pleasure. (On other days instead of going to a resturant we simply

Ok; here I go fast! I am on an French keyboard in my hotel in Paris and I only have 5 minutes left on my ten dollar an hour internet access to post this message. Ok, that took one minute. I have only this to say then. Paridise is in Paris. And, Americans sold theirs to Walmart. I see this is no great revelation to the world. However? it is new to me. I will try to explain more later. Perhaps Paridise is bought upon the heads of riotors in the suburbs. I cant say. Perhaps they should eat some more cake? All I knozw is the bread tastes better at the patisserie than from the man named wonder?

Well, here I am in Paris and back to work. Right now my work machine is trying to sync enormous amounts of data, and it looks like it is going to be a few hours until I am even begin to be productive. So, I figured I would post a brief message about my weekend. I spent much of the weekend lost. On several occasions I 'thought' I was going a particular direction but I was not. Even when I would refer to my map I could rarely find the name of the street I was on. On Saturday I went miles in the wrong direction to the point I was actually outside the 'inner ring'. When I entered a neighborhood that looked like cars may have been burned there recently I decided I ought to figure out where I was. I went into a hotel and that is when I found out how off track I was. I had walked so far in the wrong direction I nearly could have made it to the Eiffel tower had I gone the other way. The trip wasn't a completely wasted exercise. I did walk through a number of outdoo

Well, I'm typing this blog entry from an internet cafe in Paris. For once my flight went smoothly and I arrived safely early this Saturday morning. The internet cafe is pleasant and they are burning incense which gives it a nice vibe. I'm not able to check into my hotel until 2pm, and I arrived at 8am in the morning (without sleep of course) so I'm wandering around Paris aimlessly until later today. I tried to ride the subway but the attendant didn't, or wouldn't, speak English and I just decided to walk. I'm going to be here for two weeks so I might as well get the hang of the area. This evening I would like to go to some kind of a 'show'; afterall it's Saturday night in Paris. I only have 4 non-work days for my entire trip and I want to get something out of them. I have no real agenda, but I plan to spend a very, very, very, long day at the Louvre tomorrow, looking at everything which interests me and at my own pace. I know it is cliche and a

Sheesh, my calendar is out of control. On Thursday we had a Thanksgiving dinner at Troy, DeMolay. We appointed committees and selected a chairman for each. On Friday I had an out of town visitor at work and numerous meetings. Then came Saturday. I went down to the Scottish Rite on Saturday morning to receive 'Dad' training in DeMolay. After that we attended Squire's inititaion, DeMolay initiation, the DeMolay degree and the flower talk and then dinner. After that we had state installation, awards, ceremonies and speeches. Only then did we finally have a dance. Today, on Sunday, I took my whole family to the St. Louis Symphony at Powell Symphony Hall. We got to hear a Mozart Piano concerto and Beethoven's 7th. Oh my God, was it awesome! If you ever have the opportunity to hear either the 7th or the 9th you should do it! It was an incredible experience. All my daughter could say was how badly she needed to get to a piano to start playing as soon as possible. T

Well, I haven't posted in a few days. Things have been, and continue to be, very busy at work. My office is going to be sending me to Paris for a little over a week next Friday. I'm pretty excited about the trip. I know there is all that trouble in the news about the riots but, from what I hear from people who are there, none of this is affecting daily activity in Paris itself. At any rate, I am hopefull that things will be under control when I get there. My job is to integrate some of our technology into a customer's product. A task I think I can be fairly competent at. I intentionally decided to take the trip over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Since we had no specific plans for Thanksgiving this year this time turned out to be the least disruptive. My calender is certainly getting full otherwise. I'm genuinely excited about being in the Shrine. It's a fantastic organization with so many opportunities to have fun with your whole family, all of the time raisin