A recent visitor to Quincy posted some beautiful pictures of St. Rose on her blog, so go check them out.

The St. Rose website is now up and running! There’s a photo gallery with all the images I have so far, including the ones I picked out for my blog earlier, and an event calendar that includes information for upcoming daily Masses. More features will be coming, so keep an eye on it. Suggestions are most welcome. I’ll continue also announcing things here for now, since the site is so new that the search engines won’t have found it yet.

Today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation, so there will be a special High Mass at 6:00pm in addition to the usual weekday Low Mass at 12:10pm. The High Mass will be followed by Adoration until 1:00am. More info at that link.

There will be a Christmas Midnight Mass, beginning at midnight (when else?) Christmas morning, preceded by Christmas carols at 11:30pm. The organ is expected to be working again by then, so it should be a beautiful ceremony.

Officially, I still think the no-smoking law is stupid. Most people I know hated all the smoke in bars and the way their clothes reeked the next day. Even some smokers complained about it. When that many people really want something, the market provides it. People want movies through the mail, deep-fried nuggets of chicken, and sweaters for dogs, so the market provides them. If thousands of people in Quincy really wanted a non-smoking bar, someone would have opened one a long time ago and be raking in the profits. Apparently we didn’t want it that badly.

But I can’t say I miss the smoke. It’s nice to be able to go shoot pool for a few hours and not leave with burning eyes, dry mouth, and a coat that will need to be dry-cleaned before it smells decent again. Last night we played league pool at a bar that’s closing down; so the great legal minds who owned the place decided that, since they weren’t selling alcohol anymore, they could smoke. I don’t know if it was because I’m not used to it anymore, or maybe the thrill of getting away with something had them smoking three times as fast as normal, but it was hard to take. After an hour, my eyes were stinging and there was a definite haze in the air. Luckily, I shot first. Normally I stick around to watch the whole team play, but last night I got the heck out of there as soon as I was done.

That was the last time we play this session, unless we made the city tournament. After playing every Sunday night for the last few months, I’m ready for a break. Especially this time of year, there are plenty of other things to do.