Mainlining Christmas

For the last week and a half leading up to Christmas, we're posting a "Nerdtivity" scene every night at midnight. Tonight's picture features spacecraft* from six different geeky properties - go ahead and look. Five are pretty obvious, but I'll be impressed if you can spot the sixth. *Okay, so technically the Batwing isn't a spaceship. But it counts anyway, because Batman can breathe in space .

We've been running "Nerdtivity" scenes every night. This one is for all of you who didn't get enough Ridley Scott holiday cheer from watching  Prometheus  (which would have been much improved with the special guests in the picture above, I might add). By the way, this is your LAST CHANCE to vote for our first Nerdtivity scene in the contest that inspired all this madness. You can view all the pictures and  vote for your favorite here . Once you've looked at the options, just scroll to the bottom and comment with the number for your pick. Our entry, Away Team in a Manger, is #26.

Between now and Christmas, we'll be posting a "Nerdtivity" scene every night at midnight. Tonight's picture is a reminder of the dangers of science without constraint. By the way, the contest for best Nerdtivity has entered the "audience voting" phase. You can view all the pictures and  vote for your favorite here . Once you've looked at the options, just scroll to the bottom and comment with the number for your pick. Our entry, Away Team in a Manger, is #26.

Between now and Christmas, we'll be posting a "Nerdtivity" scene every night at midnight. Tonight, we're presenting this portrayal of the construction of the robot Savior who kills for his own sins. Futurama fans will of course recognize this scene as being set in Mexico. By the way, the contest for best Nerdtivity has entered the "audience voting" phase. You can view all the pictures and  vote for your favorite here . Once you've looked at the options, just scroll to the bottom and comment with the number for your pick. Our entry, Away Team in a Manger, is #26.

Between now and Christmas, we'll be posting a "Nerdtivity" scene every night at midnight. Tonight, I'm posting a picture we're calling, "Bat-Mite's Christmas Spectacular." By the way, the contest for best Nerdtivity has entered the "audience voting" phase. You can view all the pictures and  vote for your favorite here . Once you've looked at the options, just scroll to the bottom and comment with the number for your pick. Our entry, Away Team in a Manger, is #26.

Between now and Christmas, we'll be posting a "Nerditivity" scene every night at midnight. Tonight's picture may be a little convoluted in theme, but Christmas has some special significance to all those present. By the way, the contest for best Nerdtivity has entered the "audience voting" phase. You can view all the pictures and vote for your favorite here . Once you've looked at the options, just scroll to the bottom and comment with the number for your pick. Our entry, Away Team in a Manger, is #26.

UPDATED : Voting is open on the Nerdtivity contest. Head over to this page , pick your favorite, then comment with the corresponding number. Our entry (same as the above image) is #26. Between now and Christmas, we'll be posting a "Nerditivity" scene every night at midnight. Don't think that means we'll be slacking on the rest of our Christmas duties, though - this is going to push to us to a minimum of four posts a day instead of three. Tonight, I'm presenting our entry to the " Kevin and Chuck Want You to Make a Nerdtivity Contest ", which is what inspired all this. Also, it added the word "Nerdtivity" to our lexicon, for which I'll be forever grateful. We're calling this one, "Away Team in a Manger," and I'll leave it to you to revisit the question, "Whose child is this?" In case anyone's wondering, all the Nerdtivity scenes we're posting were done without digital alteration beyond cropp

Erin talked a bit about our trip to Leavenworth already. I'm picking up the story at about 4:15 pm. We are on the east side of a very tall mountain, so it's getting dark. Neither of us quite expected the slush to be as thick as it was, so my feet are wet, and our hands are cold. We've been standing or walking for most of the last five hours. And we're making our way towards the crowds. Yeah, if we'd wanted a good view, we would have had to stand in the cold a lot longer than either of us were in the mood for at that point in the day. We staked out an okay spot, and waited. And waited. And tried to hear what was going on. There was some singing, and some speeches, and finally Santa! Yeah, I know, a little bit of an anticlimax. Next, if I recall the series of events correctly, some people played alphorns , which was pretty cool, although I could barely hear them. Then it was time for, according to the description of this event in the flye

It was December 6, 2014. Saint Nicholas Day.   We decided it would be a good day to go to Christmastown. Or at least the Western Washington Bavarian equivalent, also known as Leavenworth. The town sits just on the other side of Stevens Pass. To put it another way, this is a place that's pretty much guaranteed to get a white Christmas. We probably  could have survived the drive there and back in our Honda Fit, but we didn't feel like chancing it. Instead we bought bus tickets. This, of course, extended our trip length by an extra two hours or so, since it meant we first had to head to Seattle Center to catch the bus before the three and a half hour ride to Leavenworth. All in all, this took us more than fifteen hours: not exactly a short excursion. Fortunately, it was pretty awesome. Even more importantly, it was Christmas . When we reached the frost line, it felt like we were approaching the North Pole. Not the real North Pole, obviously; more like somethi

Toys R Us, 9/16/14. Front of the store, right beside the Halloween Merchandise If you're tired of waiting for the holiday's, we've got some good news: Christmas is already here. It's still small. It's still hiding in the shadows, biding its time while it grows. Sort of like in Alien, when the xenomorph skittered off after bursting through John Hurt's chest. Now it's out there somewhere. Waiting. Watching. Preparing to leap out and wish you a Merry Christmas. It's September, so it's no surprise the Lego Store was eager to devote their front window display to their new Christmas offerings. 9/19/14 But you don't have to wait. You can go see it for yourselves. Corporate stores everywhere have begun strategically setting holiday products in their aisles. And as the world's premier Yuletide website, we here at Mainlining Christmas felt it was our responsibility to document the occasion. K-Mart, just getting started on 9/9/14. Even wit

Our never-ending quest for the shiniest sparkliest Christmas-ness brought us, in time, to the Evergreen Community Church in Bothell, WA. This is the second year they have hosted a synchronized light show for the holidays. You walk through a pretty cool tunnel to get to the viewing area. (The guy at the end is handing out candy canes.) A sign on site said that the tunnel alone contains 7,600 lights. There's a little side display with trees and reindeer that's pretty cute. Inside the building pictured is a train set, some informational signs, a place to donate to the YMCA, and free snacks: cider, hot chocolate and cookies.  But the real show is the front of the church itself. 270 independently controlled sections of lights, 2 miles of extension cords, 2 "Mega Trees" with 12,800 lights each... Enjoy some excerpts: All in all, it was a damn fine display!

In my search for more holiday cheer, I heard that there is a street in Ravenna (a neighborhood here in Seattle) which goes all out for Christmas. Looks promising. Now, the big thing you have to know about this is how busy it was. It's a small, residential street, and you can either drive through or park nearby and walk. It was around 9 p.m. on a Saturday when we stopped by, and the line of cars to get there was blocks and blocks long. We parked and walked. Almost all the houses had pretty cute decorations. Giant candy canes and the word "peace" in many languages were prominently featured. The most impressive bit was the centerpiece, a 'carousel' around a hedge: In motion: The houses were very cute, although I'm not really sure why anyone would wait in that line of cars to drive through. When we left after about 15 minutes, we saw that the line had died down a little. However, some of the cars that we

The other day we stopped by Seattle Center to see what our new home has in the way of Christmas cheer. We found a pretty sweet model train village decked out for the holidays. The carousel spun and lit up, and there were two flying vehicles suspended from the ceiling. Not sure what's going on here, but we think that's a widowed doll coming out of the graveyard. I liked the bits of wreckage at the bottom of the canyon. It was slightly odd that the dollhouse scale people didn't match the scale of the trains and some of the vehicles, but it wasn't too noticeable. Not a bad little set-up, overall.