"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" - Casablanca (1942)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Collins Chronicles version 2.0!  Today, we proudly launch our new weekly email newsletter in an effort to keep in better touch with the dozens of you out there that have so graciously agreed to be apart of the special brand of madness that we release into the world.

In this week's edition, we will try to lay out our goals for the e-newsletter, share a story about a new product that I have bought that will amaze those of you who know me best, and lastly start planning ahead for a new Collins Chronicles venture we are launching this fall.  Thank you again for joining our new email distribution list.  Feel free to forward these weekly emails along to others and invite them to join the fun by simply emailing me at BDC@CollinsChronicles.com to sign up.  Now, onto all the news that is fit to print...

WHY ARE WE HERE?

The Collins Chronicles have always worked best as a collaborative process.  When the website was initially founded, much of the early traffic was generated by the restaurant rankings and reviews that we did monthly, and the feedback that readers provided on those articles.  I have to give much of the credit for the inspiration of those rankings to my good friend KastleKeep in North Carolina, who teamed with BDC to form the "Lexington Lunch Patrol" during my days in North Carolina.  Now that I reside in Lexington, Kentucky, I am getting new use of out the LLP hats we had made.

The other great collaborative venture that has made The Collins Chronicles go has been the reader-voted tournaments that we have hosted in the past couple of years.  Many of you reading these words now were introduced to our site by participating in our greatest rock band voting or the best TV show of the past decade voting.  The winners were Led Zeppelin and The Office for those of you who missed out on one or both.  These tournaments were both suggested by readers, and those of you who voted were amazingly faithful to get your votes in on time every week.

That faithful dedication to our little band of brothers and sisters has long been what has driven me to keep The Collins Chronicles alive and updated as often as possible.  When my time and attention has slipped away from the site for too many weeks at a time, I never fail to get a call or an email from one of you out there asking how things are going and when the site will get some new material posted on it.  Those requests have never fallen on deaf ears, but the process of moving and the changing of jobs and houses and lifestyles have really complicated the website maintenance process.  Once again, it was a couple of reader emails that suggested the email newsletter format, and he we are now!

Looking over the list of "subscribers" to the inaugural edition of our email, we have folks representing nine states:  Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia.  I am not calling anyone out, but the ages range from college to retirees.  We are very eclectic and interesting group, for sure.  Many of you know each other and a couple of you probably only know me, but over the course of time, we are all going to have a good time together.  A lot of that will be at my expense, I am sure, but I can handle that, as you will see in the following section.

One of your fellow readers out there asked for a mission statement for this new venture, and I promise to deliver one very soon.  After you have read this first edition, I hope you will begin to see the basic purpose of this labor of love.  I hope to see all of our readers entertained, engaged, and encouraged by these emails.  We all get enough bad news and work dropped on us via email, that I hope this weekly message provides you with a few moments of humor and happiness.  Most of all, I hope this email serves to help us all keep in better touch with each other and to share stories, opinions, and updates as the months and years go by.  You all know my email address, so use it!

BDC BOUGHT WHAT???

Those of you that have known me since I got married and became a homeowner several years ago know that I detest yard work.  Up until this year, I have never even owned a lawnmower or any other lawn and garden tools for that matter.  We lived in a condo with maintained grounds in North Carolina, and I hired people to handle the lawn duties at each of the residents I had in Tennessee.  When we moved up to Kentucky, though, we finally found a house with a yard that even I agreed was small enough for me to maintain myself.  The yard is not a postage stamp by any means, but it is the smallest yard of any house that the wife and I have owned by a good amount.

I still solicited a few bids from local landscaping crews to handle the job, but all of them were far higher than I felt was fair for the small lawn.  I decided I would handle the task myself, so I spent last winter researching lawnmowers and weed-eaters online.  Since my lawn was small enough, I decided I would forgo the traditional gas-powered tools in favor of their electric counterparts.  The more research I did, I learned that the cordless electric mowers did not hold charges very well, and the plug-in models left you having to work around the cord as you crisscrossed the lawn.  That is when I discovered the Brill RazorCut Reel Mower.

In all honesty, my only exposure to manually-driven reel mowers previously had been from watching episodes of "Leave it to Beaver" in black-and-white as a kid.  I was not aware that these things were even sold any more, much less that they were still in great demand over in Europe.  Several hours of research and a few "YouTube" demonstration videos later, I ordered my new lawnmower from Germany online.  I know you are all already thinking that this was crazy.  Why would a guy who hates lawn work and does not really give a fig and being "green" or reducing his carbon footprint buy a mower that is going to take longer and require more effort to complete the job?  The answer is two-fold.  For one, our garage space here in Kentucky is limited and the new mower only weighs seven pounds and is small enough to hang on the wall when I am not using it.  Secondly, those enterprising Germans have made this mower maintenance-free for a minimum of eight years.  No gas, no oil changes, no blade-sharpening, nothing.  With those two factors in mind, I was sold.

When the box arrived I immediately encountered the first problem.  All of the parts and instructions were in German.  Not a lick of English in the box or on the packaging to be found anywhere.  Needless to say, the assembly took a little longer than hoped, but thankfully our sausage-loving friends over the pond did include some pretty detailed drawings that got me through the process.  Once I had the mower assembled, I proudly marched out to my backyard to see what this little monster could do.  I made it about four feet with excruciating effort before realizing that the recommended cutting height settings were a little too ambitious for the first time around my yard.  After raising the blades up to forty milliimeters (who doesn't love the metric system?), I had a significantly easier time pushing the mower.  I was very impressed with the experience from the first few minutes.  The mowing is so quiet you can hear to talk on the phone or listen to an MP3 player with ease.  The mower handles grass and clover with ease, but requires a couple of extra passes at times to handle weeds or taller grasses.  All in all, I was pleased with the results in my backyard and headed out to knock out my smaller front yard area.  That is where the story gets a little sad.

As I began making passes back and forth across my front lawn, I noticed a little boy of roughly four years of age staring intently at me from a couple of driveways down the block.  I knew there was trouble in the wind.  The young lad had clearly been instructed to remain in his own driveway, and he obeyed those orders like a soldier.  He walked all the way to the edge of his driveway and after studying my work for a few more seconds, finally yelled out to me..."HEY MISTER!...YOUR MOWER IS NOT ON!..."

It is a dark day for any man when he realizes that he is being heckled by a toddler in his own yard.  I was disheartened, of course, but I did what any self-respecting man in my place would have done.  I took one look at this little hooligan down the street...and I pretended to adjust the non-existent earphones in my ears and kept mowing.  The tiny heckler was not easily satisfied, though.  Again he informed me, slightly louder and with more feeling this time..."HEY...MISTER...YOUR....MO...WER...IS...NOT...OOOONNN!!!"

Again, I kept with my plan of ignoring the tiny terror of my afternoon, and I continued working my mower around the lone tree in my front yard.  The kid down the block was now completely disgusted and looked around at no one in particular and shrugged his shoulders to the heavens at my apparent ignorance in this matter.  After a few seconds more of careful examination of my first attempt at mowing a lawn since before the millennium, the determined young lad tried a new tact in his taunts..."HEY MISTER!  MY DAD'S MOWER IS LOUDER THAN YOURS!"

Ouch.  That one stung somewhere deep in my macho man-core.  I was nearly enticed into responding when he repeated this new taunt a second time, once again louder and with more desperation.  I was finishing off the last couple of passes on the lawn and contemplating what sort of response might convince a four-year-old that me and my mower were not the kind of team that needed to be trifled with, when the little loudmouth was enticed back into the house by the offer of a popsicle from his grandmother.

This story may seem sad to some, but it just illustrates how clear it is that I am not meant to handle mowing duties in this life.  Where else in this world or any like it would you see a hulking former professional wrestler shoving a tiny motor-less lawnmower around a tiny lawn while being mercilessly heckled by an even tinier onlooker?  I say nowhere else, but in the wonderful and wacky world of The Collins Chronicles.  As for the mowing, I think I will work on getting WDC trained up on it as soon as he has mastered walking.  At least then the neighbor kid can pick on someone his own size!

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?

The recent NFL Draft and my recent attendance of the Tennessee spring football scrimmage (with Chronicles reader, Seymour...great times) have put BDC in a football frame of mind.  With that said, my recent change of scenery has left me without a fantasy football league to play in for the first time in years.  Thus, I am looking to launch the first-ever Collins Chronicles Fantasy Football League this coming fall.  I know it is still early, but it is never too soon to start thinking about your draft rankings.  If you or someone you know would like to participate or would like more information on my plans for the league, please email me at BDC@CollinsChronicles.com.  We need at least ten teams to participate, so whether you have played before or not, throw your hat in the ring and try your hand at some fantasy football with Commissioner BDC this fall.

Hope you enjoyed the inaugural newsletter.  Drop me a line any time you have comments, suggestions, or ideas for The Collins Chronicles.  Talk to you next week!