I can’t believe it is November 2008 already!  Holy crap on a cracker time flies, huh?

Oz is seven months old now, believe it or not.  He has five teeth in with three or four more lurking right below the surface of his gums.  He has mastered rolling all directions and sitting up by himself.  He spends a lot of time in the pursuit of efficient crawling, but so far his efforts mostly resemble a wounded and disoriented soldier trying unsuccessfully to escape a combat zone.  The little guy has become quite a little noisemaker, though.  If you make any sound for him enough times, and he can see the motion of your mouth in making it, he can pretty quickly replicate it.  Thanks to his having BDC for a father, that means he is highly adept at making fart sounds and professional wrestling sound effects, which is good fun for everyone.

I realize there is a new segment of Collins Chronicles readers out there who only check in for Oz updates, so you can now scroll to the bottom of this article for a recent picture and be on your way.  Thanks for joining us!

For those of you who have been around since before the arrival of WDC and still enjoy a good BDC tale, sit back and allow me to lay out the details of my recent trip to Chicago, Illinois.

Many of you are aware that my paternal grandfather lives in northwest Indiana out the outskirts of the Chicago suburbs.  My parents had a trip planned up to see him, and we decided to load up WDC and tag along.  Given the shorter drive time from Lexington to Chicago, the trip coinciding with a couple of events in the greater Chicago area that I wanted to attend, and the presence of the grandparents to act as sitters for the boy, this was a prime time for us to travel.

We did our best to plan our travel around WDC’s feeding schedule and he was a great passenger in his first trip of any distance.  We used Indianapolis as a halfway stopping point to get out and stretch and feed Oz.  This also provided an opportunity for me to take up a challenge that I discovered online some time ago.

On the way up to Chicago, we stopped from lunch at a small burger joint in Carmel, Indiana (a northern suburb of Indy that is worth a visit if you are in the area) by the name of Bub’s Burgers and Ice Cream.  Bub’s is home to the Big Ugly Burger challenge.  Anyone able to finish off a 22-ounce loaded cheeseburger in one sitting gets their picture on the wall.  Here is a picture of the Big Ugly before it hits the grill (the giant one on the left)…

I will not tell the full story, but you will notice at the bottom of this entry there is a picture of WDC and myself.  That picture is hanging on the wall of Bub’s Burgers in Carmel, Indiana now.  I not only finished off the loaded Big Ugly Burger, but I chased it with a large side of waffle fries and a large Coke along with a bite of a delicious Black Angus chili dog that my dad ordered and a couple of bites of my mom’s ice cream.  This brings the count of restaurants with permanent displays of BDC up to two.  That’s not even counting the sticker of my head that graced nearly every Krystal burger franchise location for several months last year.

After my awesome display of appetite, we were back on the road.  My aunt in Crown Point, Indiana was gracious enough to provide us with some free lodging during our travels.  Crown Point is a great town if not for its distance north.  Anything north of around Cincinnati is basically an uninhabitable tundra in my book.  My apologies to my Eskimo friends in Wisconsin.  If you are hearty enough to survive the cold northern Indiana winters, Crown Point would be a great place to live.  They have a large variety of restaurants nearby and a manageable drive into Chicago.

In honor of our visit to see our Indiana family, they decided to celebrate Thanksgiving in October with us.  This was by far the best fake holiday in which I had ever participated.  The spread of food they put out was immense and delicious.  I encountered pea salad for the first time and it joined potato, egg, and taco as the only salads that I would consider eating again in my life.  I got to see some family that I had not seen in years, and almost all of them got to meet Oz for the first time.  He was a serious charmer while we were up there and gave everyone smiles and let most anyone hold him.

Once Saturday rolled around, I got to use the trip to have a really cool, once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will always remember.  I got to go to UFC 90 with my father and grandfather.  Three generations of Collins men rolled into the Allstate Arena in Chicago for some serious cage-fighting action.  Sadly, the main event ended in controversial fashion with the challenger blowing out his knee in a non-contact manner, but several of the other fights were more than entertaining.  It was just a thrill for me to by there with my dad, grandfather, and uncle, regardless.  It was my fifth UFC trip in the last twenty months, and it was one of the most memorable, not for the fights, but for the company I got to keep.

Sunday night, Wife of BDC and I got the rare opportunity to go out alone for the evening.  While my parents watched the Oz-man, we went out to eat and then headed to the Star Plaza Theater in Merrillville, Indiana to see Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman in concert together on their United tour.  I can not say enough good things about these guys or the show that they put on.  If this tour comes anywhere near your area, I strongly suggest you go and check it out.  For those who may not know them, both of these guys are legends in the world of Christian music.  This tour is their first venture together in their long and celebrated careers.  Steven Curtis Chapman is performing on this tour even though his five-year-old daughter was killed in an accident only five months ago.  The strength and emotion that he showed in his time on the stage inspired, encouraged, and touched me more than I ever expected.  These two guys will probably be on the main stage when we get to Heaven, so you might want to check them out and learn the songs of eternity right now.

We drove back down to Lexington on Monday and stopped in at Lynn’s Paradise Café in Louisville, Kentucky for lunch.  This place has to be seen and experienced to be understood.  It is one funky establishment with a menu that has been featured on the Food Network not once, but twice.  They serve breakfast all day and that is their claim to fame, but I went with the official sandwich of my new home state of Kentucky, the Hot Brown.  It was great.  If you find yourself in the Louisville, Kentucky area, hit Lynn’s and have your picture made with the Elvis bear like this…

(Picture coming soon)

That is about all I have it in me to write for today.  I want to end by thanking all of you who have written, called, or texted to check on our family and our adjustment to life in Kentucky.  In all honesty, as much as we miss everyone in Tennessee (especially you, Bruce Pearl), our life here in Kentucky is a happier and healthier one for us at this point in life.  Work is great for me here, and I get to go home for lunch and see the Wife and WDC, which brightens my day more than I could ever have guessed.  We love our house and our new community.  All of the Kentucky Wildcat blue everywhere gets old, but it makes me love my orange even more.  I hope that some of you will stop by and see us as you travel I-75.  We are right off the interstate here on the northern edge of Lexington, so it will not add any time to your trip, but it will delight us to see any of you out there.  If you can’t make it up, at least keep dropping us a line, and we will try to see you when we come back to K-town to visit.  Until we meet again, just remember what my sonny boy, Oz, told me this morning…”aaargghhhh buh buh buh buh buh”