Tomorrow is the big St. Patrick’s Day corned beef and cabbage (and mashed potatoes) dinner at St. Rose!  It’s from 11-7, and it’s $8/person or $35/family.  Kids under 12 are $5.  We cooked up 500 pounds of meat, which I think is four times what we started with last year, so we shouldn’t run out unless we get twice as many people.  Last year we ran out by 1:30 and had to scramble to have some cooked on short notice, and it wasn’t nearly as good.  This year we’re much better prepared, and we’re hoping to serve a thousand people.

There will be Irish-flavored music all day, from several different groups.  Last year, I thought I’d be insane or deaf by the end of the day, but it was actually pretty nice.  The groups change every hour or so, so the music is always fresh.  See the link above to see who’s playing when.  Bring all your family and friends to enjoy the food and music!  There’s also High Mass at 9:30am, instead of the usual 12:10pm Low Mass.

At 7pm, right when our dinner ends, there is also an Irish music concert at St. Boniface Church, featuring a harpist and a soprano singer.  I’d be there myself, except I’ll probably be elbow deep in dishes at that point, but it sounds very good.  The entrance fee is a free-will offering, with $10 suggested, and the proceeds will be split between Quincy Catholic Charities and Mission of Hope Haiti.  It’s a chance to hear some good music and see one of Quincy’s architectural centerpieces.

Between finishing up end-of-the-month work, teaching Latin class, getting ready for the soup dinner, shoveling snow, and recovering from shoveling snow, I haven’t managed to post anything here for about a week.  Today isn’t any better, so I’ll just post this announcement about the soup dinner at St. Rose on Sunday, from 11-2:30.  We’re having 5 different kinds of soup, plus cream-turkey sandwiches, desserts, and drinks.  Further details at that link.

We’ve also got a pretty excellent raffle going, with a grand prize of a $200 gift certificate from the Butcher Block, and several other prizes of gift cards from local businesses.  Tickets will be available at the dinner for $1 each or 6 for $5.

See you there!

Well, Sunday’s dinner at St. Rose went pretty well.  We fed about 230 people, which was definitely more than last year’s January dinner.  There was leftover pork and potatoes, but I’m sure they’ll all get eaten.  None of my raffle tickets won, so I guess no one missed out by not taking me up on my “comment and get a raffle ticket” offer.  I’ll try that again next month. Read more »

Well, my first Latin class went well, what there was of it.  We had to cut the first class short at about a half hour, so we just got through some basic pronunciation stuff.  That seems to be what people are the most concerned about, which surprised me a little, because I don’t remember spending much time on that when I learned it.  I guess that makes sense: unlike the classroom, when you recite or sing in Church, you want to speak the words correctly right from the start even if you don’t know what they all mean yet.

So we’ll be continuing on pronunciation next week, and practicing by going through the prayers at the foot of the altar (the beginning of Mass) line by line, covering any tricky words.  I think the worst one is cithara, which is pronounced CHEE-tah-rah.  The word means harp, but to me it sounds like the name of the half-girl, half-cat heroine of an 80s Saturday morning cartoon.

Class is also moving to Tuesdays at 6:30pm.  As soon as I picked Monday, I found out some people couldn’t make it on Monday, which is about what I figured would happen.  So it’ll be Tuesday until further notice.  We’ll be reviewing last week’s material again, so if anyone was interested but thought they’d missed out, you’ve got one more chance to get in at the beginning!

Well, now the holidays are over and schedules are getting back somewhat to normal, it’s time to start having fundraising dinners at St. Rose again!  The first one this year is this coming Sunday, the 24th, from 11-2:30.  Come for the 11:00 High Mass and stay for lunch!  We’ll be serving pulled-pork sandwiches (perhaps pulled by yours truly), green beans, corn, mashed potatoes, dessert, etc.  More information at the link above.

Also, we’re having a couple raffles.  One is a 50/50, and the other will give away a night’s stay for two at Stoney Creek Inn, plus some gift baskets.  So I’m going to do what I did last year: I will buy a raffle ticket for the first ten people who leave a comment on this post.  Just be sure to say which raffle you want me to enter for you.

I think my desk is in the coldest corner of the house.  It’s definitely the furthest from the furnace, and I think the square of floor under my desk is influenced more by the outside temperature on the other side of the wall than by the heated air blowing down from above.  A slab foundation, hardwood floors, and forced air heat from the ceiling just aren’t a good combination for warm feet.  Any concrete floor that I ever pour for myself, even for a chicken house, is going to have pipes for radiant heat.  That would feel really good right now. Read more »

Wow, this was a busy weekend.  Not busy in my usual sense of, “I missed my two-hour afternoon nap,” but seriously busy.  I’m still looking for a weekend when I can do nothing but relax, but it looks like that won’t be happening for a while yet.

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We had some new people at the 8:00 Mass this Sunday, and I discovered afterward that we’re not doing a very good job of helping newbies get started and follow along.  After you’ve been going a while, it’s easy to forget how confusing it was the first time, but it doesn’t have to be that way if people are helped a little.  So for people who are thinking about joining us at St. Rose, here’s a step-by-step guide that I hope will prevent some confusion.

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Like I mentioned a week or so ago, there was a lot going on at St. Rose in the last few days of Lent, leading up to Easter.  I couldn’t make it to the Maundy Thursday Mass, unfortunately, but I was able to go to the Good Friday liturgy and Easter Vigil Saturday night.  Both were long, but definitely worth the effort.

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Latin Lesson #15 is up, on neuter nouns of the third declension.  It’s a pretty easy one, really; there’s nothing very special about them.  I can’t believe I’m up to 15 of these things already, and actually staying more or less on schedule with them.  Soon it’ll be time to start working on the e-book and podcasts.

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