Last Weekly Features of This Year

2010 has been fun, but all good things must come to an end. So let's get to the last weekly features of the year and not be all sappy about it, okay?

This week's top five is Christmas presents my sons received that I am sure to spend time playing with:

5. Flying Millenium Falcon - The mini-helicopter style ship is a little tough to maneuver at first, but with practice, I hope to be able to make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.

4. Sing-a-ma-jigs - These are designed for infants, but the mouth-opening, singing stuffed animals are hypnotic. I can't help but play with these stocking stuffers.

3. Nerf guns - The Stampede has proven to be an even more formidable weapon than I had imagined it would be.

2. Lego trains - The cordless remote control and multiple speed settings are awesome.

1. Classic toy soldiers - Just like the ones my brothers and I used to play with, they have all the classic poses like crawling, mortar launcher, grenade tosser and even enemy guy getting shot.

This week's cool-ass thing you will never own is the original Lego yellow castle in its box. You can find them on eBay, but they are $400 and up including al the pieces and minifigures and the box that it came in. While I'm normally a believer in taking things out of the box regardless of collectible value, this iconic set would be cool to display unopened. However, I have yet to find anyone even mentioning they have one out there, probably for fear of nerd burglary.

This week's sign you are a nerd is that you received a Lego Star Wars set for Christmas despite being over thirty years old. Yes, I did and I'm proud of it. Just to ensure I wasn't alone, I bought my brother one too.

This week's nemesis is the quiz book, Obsessed with Marvel. While I thought I knew most of what there is to be known about the Marvel Universe, my inability to get my score over 50% has left me humbled.

This week's lesson learned is to have a bucket or bin of some sort at the ready before allowing your kids to open their new Lego sets. Your knees will thank me for the reduction in time spent crawling around on the floor looking under furniture for the pieces they will inevitable spill out onto the floor and send bouncing in all directions.

This week's equation is:

The time that will elapse before the condition of your house returns back to normal (t) can be found by multiplying the number of kids you have (k) by the percentage of toys they received with small pieces (p) and adding to this product the number of days they are off from school (s) while subtracting the number of days you have off from work (w).

The Star Wars quote for this week is, "You've never heard of the Millenium Falcon? It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs." That's the second time in one post that quote has been used. I bet that's a record.

Thanks for reading, as usual. Good luck in the new year. Get to work on those resolutions.