FrankenDog!
It's been a rough week here at the Vaughn Household for the Vaughn Family Dog, Dagny. She had a routine doggy dentist trip on Friday that turned into her worst vet nightmare. It all started with the vet finding a cracked tooth while cleaning her teeth. They also took notice of the various bumps she's been getting all over, and did a check of them, including the one on her face. They determined that most of them were benign, but the one on her face could not be conclusively identified as benign OR cancerous, so it had to be cut off.

When all was said and done she had her eyebrows shaved off, a big scar down the front of her face, a swollen muzzle, and a patch of fur the size of a playing card shaved off on her side. To add insult to injury, it's been incredibly hot here, with heat indexes in the 100's, so Dagny has been confined to the house as well. Finally the Vet tried to get her to wear the doggy cone, but that was just TOO much. She is making a speedy recovery though, and has already been spotted running the fence line with Duff the golden next door, and digging holes to China in the bed.  ¶ 5:56 PM  0 comments  

  Willis Goes To Austin Ed had a two week furlough in Austin between his stints in Taiwan and Bangalore so he could repatriate, recuperate, and reaquaint himself with BBQ. Will and Tim made the trek out to the Lone Star State to meet up and eat. Really, that's what we did, pretty much the entire time. Now, I didn't get much in the way of photos of any of this eating, but I did get a few photos of the gang. Those will be up in the gallery shortly but don't get your hopes up. There was a wedding at the hotel where we were staying, and Eddie spent about an hour in the lobby just playing around with the camera, taking random photos of the wedding party, among other things. No, they weren't in full wedding gear either - they were just standing around waiting for people to show up so they could go to lunch. That sums up the photographic quality of just about ALL the photos I've got from this jaunt out west.

Several other things I didn't get photos of were our trip to Berryhill Baja Grill, and our trip to Tony's house. The first tip that Berryhill Baja Grill was a little weird was when we walked in, the place was empty, and the guy at the counter just sort of stared at us. When we asked what was good, he told us that their fish tacos were awesome, and that wherever in the world the Rolling Stones are, they have Berryhill ship them their fish tacos. This was lent authenticity by the non-stop Rolling Stones they played over the PA during our stay there. I'm starting a place called "Jermaine's Motown Grill" and will tell people that anywhere in the world any of the Jackson 5 are, they have us ship them steak. "Thriller" will be the only music played there. Anyway, I ordered Chicken and Steak nachos, and avoided the Jagger Fish Tacos.

Tony's house was slightly less disturbing in that there were no faux celebrity sightings, and no breakdancing. When we rolled up, Tony was sweating the details of his baseboard measurements in his garage, so we volunteered to help him out. Not that Eddie and I are any good at trim work, but whatever - adhering to international "DINMH" rules we measured, cut, and generally "helped" as much as we could. (Dude, It's Not My House) When we finished, we had 26 lengths of baseboard cut. Unfortunately, we were supposed to have 28, and of the 26, only about 1/2 of them matched lengths we had written down earlier. We figured that was as good a time as any to recommence the eating.  ¶ 12:55 PM  0 comments  

  So long, and thanks for all the oil leaks... Today is a sad day at the Vaughn household - over the weekend, Kristina lost her close friend and trusty steed, the BMW X5. Yes, I know, its not exactly a relative or anything, but it was a loved one nonetheless. It all started with a cough and some groaning noises, then progressed to a check engine light. We were hoping it wouldn't get more serious, but when it had trouble with basics like forward and reverse, ultimately we had to put it down.

As if on cue, we also stumbled across the perfect replacement vehicle, waiting patiently for us on a Land Rover/Jag dealer's lot, wasting away surrounded by vehicles even more unreliable and stuipidly expensive than it could ever aspire to. Now we're being reasonable, we know its unlikely to fill the X5's shoes in that regard either - and to be honest, we're hoping it doesn't. Anyway, there's photos up in the gallery. Feel free to browse around while we go mourn for the dead...  ¶ 5:53 AM  0 comments  

  Inaugural Posting on the VaughnNet Blog So it's 2006, and the VaughnNet staff, always up on the latest trends, heard about this crazy thing called the Intarnet, and how people were all using it to write things online and get famous and expose politicians and become millionaires and stuff. So we decided that it was time to get in on this hot new trend, and start up the VaughnNet blog.

We're not sure what the whole plan for the Blog is just yet, but we DO have it integrated with the rest of www.vaughnnet.com (and thereby part of the vast media empire that is VaughnNet.) We'll see where that goes in the next couple of postings. We'll also stop referring to ourselves in the third person plural then too. In the mean time, check out the new additions to the galleries. We've got Fourth of July Fireworks pics, pictures of our Safari to the National Zoo, and some other goodies as well. We'll leave you with a nifty picture of a capybara.  ¶ 12:32 PM  2 comments