Pi Day (March 14th or 3-14) is on a Sunday this year. But Stammitz we wanted to have a party! So we will have a party. A Pi Approximation Day party. At this party there will be... Pies! That's right, we shall have pies and pies we shall have. How? Because you're going to make them! As usual we will have a raffle, but the raffle will be smaller than normal. Here is why, we will have 4 categories of food you can bring, with special emphasis on pies. The 4 categories you are trying to win are:

1) Best tasting Pie
2) Coolest Looking Pie
3) Best Named Pie
4) Best Non-Pie

If you want to get into the raffle just bring food. So, if you bring ANY food to share you're in the raffle. If you want the better prize... the prize of... wait for it... QUARK T-SHIRTS you got to win one of these categories. Is it going to be awesome? Yeah. Yeah it is. The low down...

What: Pi Approximation Day Social
Who: You
When: March 13th, 2010 @ 7pm through 10 pm
Where: To be announced... trying to find a room that has tables.
Why: To have fun and eat Pies

Additional information: We need 3 people to volunteer as taste testers. Send Splice a PM if you'd like to help with taste testing! If you wish to volunteer as a taste tester you must 1) be to the social 5 minutes early 2) must not be entering a pie that will be judged for tasting. If you want to enter your pie or other foods into any of these categories, you must be to the social before 7:20pm. Pies will be judged between 7:30 and 8pm

Now, I'll admit that the premise does sound a little weird, but it works. The Last Starfighter is about Alex Rogan, a teenage boy from a small town in the middle of nowhere who lives in a trailer park with his mom and little brother. His student loan was denied, so he can't afford to go to college and just spends all his extra time playing an arcade game called "Starfighter." Well, one day he actually beats the game. Apparently this game is so hard he is the first person in the entire world to do so. (gamefaqs.com hadn't been invented yet, so...) Anyway, it turns out that these arcade games were in fact training simulators sent to Earth by an alien race as a way to recruit earthlings into an interstellar war without directly involving the technologically inferior species. So yeah...

Anyway, some guy who's really an alien comes along and convinces Alex to go with him to help fight off the evil Galactic Overlord Xenu... I mean Xur. (Sorry about that.) Well... I don't want to give too much away, but after a couple strange twists of fate, all of the other starfighters who are supposed to be fighting with Alex are killed and he's the last one left. (I'll bet you didn't see that coming.) Hope I didn't spoil the movie for you.

Okay, I'm being facetious. Really, though, the movie is quite good, and if you've never seen it before, this Wednesday is going to be the best time to find out for yourself just how good 80s sci-fi can be when done well.

Same time and place as normal: B094 of the JFSB @ 7:00 p.m.

The next planned writing group meeting is for Saturday, March 13th at 2pm. If you wish to submit a story, please email it to quarkwritinggroup@gmail.com. To read the submissions before the meeting, you need to be on the Writing Group Email List (to get on, just email me, same email). This is for anyone that likes to write or read sci-fi/fantasy, so feel free to come, even if you haven't been to a meeting before.

If submitting, send your story over to me by Thursday morning, and I'll send the stories to everyone so they'll have time to read them before the writing meeting, where they can give you feedback! Try to keep your submissions, whether they be from a novel, short story, etc etc under 2000 words or so.

And then you'll be able to go to the Pi Day Extravaganza that evening, where the winners for the Writing Prompt Contest will be announced.

The Gaming event of the semester is nearly upon us! St. Gamer's Day has been scheduled and finalized. Here is the crucial info:

What: St. Gamers day is a chance for Quark to get together to play any kind of game you want. You bring it, we'll play it. That includes board, video, card, miniatures, and any other kind of game you can think of. We also have the kitchen scheduled this time. BRING FOOD! This will be a potluck affair. So bring plenty to eat, and others will hopefully respond in kind.

When: Saturday March 27th from 12-5PM.

Where: The Wymount Terrace Multi-purpose building. You can get directions here.

LAN alert: There is no access to the internet from our scheduled room, so make sure you have everything you would want to play patched and ready to go, or at least bring the install discs and patches already on disk.

just to make sure everyone has time to read the book, i'm letting everyone know right now that we'll be reading and discussing Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones.

and if saturday doesn't work as a discussion date for you, please still read the book. we'll be trying a different meeting time this month, to see when more people can come. sound good? ^^ anyway, happy reading!

Soooo... I had forgotten that this Saturday is my wife's birthday. The SAQZAPE will have to be postponed until further notice, as I will not be available to host it this week. Please keep an eye on this space for future updates about when this will be held. I apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused.

The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse. We all know it’s coming, but are we prepared? Well, we here at Quark feel it’s out duty to make sure as many of our members are prepared as can be. So, to assist in that, we will be having our Second Annual Quark Zombie Apocalypse Preparation Event. (From here on referred to as the “SAQZAPE”) It will probably start around noon, but check back here for updates to make sure.

“But what will go on at the SAQZAPE?” you ask. For starters there will be Zombie-theme survival games, zombie apocalypse instructional videos, Zombie Apocalypse scenarios, zombie plan critiques, and probably a whole lot more!

Right now this is scheduled to take place at my apartment, however, I do not have a lot of room, so please please please please please please RSVP so I will know if I need to seek a larger venue or not.

Thank you, and be careful.

Be there or be zombie chow.

Winners should be announced at the next Quark social, the Pi Day one.

If you are interested in being a judge for the contest, please PM or email me. Thanks!

Check the forum page for further details.

I'm posting up my to-do list so everyone is more informed of where we're at with the site transition. Please add bugs and other requests as comments. These are not in any particular order.