Year of 1998
09/03/98: Started this site.
09/12/98: Pam Tillis concert in Pekin
09/15/98: Out to Washington Grade School with Jerry for another walk-thru.
09/22/98 - 09/25/98: Holding a Boxes & Wires camp at the Hub's lab area all week.
09/25/98: Leaving work early to meet with Joe out at Northwestern Elementary for a walk-thru.
09/26/98: It has been decided that this weekend is the only available weekend
that everyone has
open for a motorcycle trip. My two uncles will come down Friday the 25th, rest up,
spend the night, then on Saturday morning we head west towards Nauvoo on the
bikes. We are currently sitting at five bikes on the trip and I invite any of my
friends
with a cycle to join us.
Year of 1999
02/07/99: I'm positive something special happened on this day. :)
03/??/99: Purchased a place to hang my hat in Washington.
12/01/99: Asked Cathy to be my wife. (She said yes)
Year of 2000
01/21/00: Got onto the @home network. Cable Modem! YES! High
speed access all the time!
If you can get one of these in your area, GET IT! Normal speeds are just short of a
T1
line at $40.00 per month. It frees up the phone line, and I don't have to wait for
sites to
load in. It is great. I like it, I love it, you gotta get it!
02/07/00: There is that date again, I sure wish I could remember.....
04/02/00: OUCH!
Big pain in my right side, so I had Cathy take me to one of the area Hospitals after a
couple of hours after it starts. Of course, as it turns out, by the time we get
there, a little
after 8:00pm, the pain is gone. Typical. Just as anything else, you get to the
repair man
and nothing. A blood test and various x-rays later, diagnosis...Kidney Stone.
We get
back home about 12:45am. Of course there is still no pain. Boy am I going to
be dead
when I get up in the morning for work.
04/03/00: Went to work today, no problem with the side or "kidney
stone", but remember I need to go
up to Galena to set up a Traveling Computer Lab on Tuesday thru Thursday. No big
deal,
but not looking forward to the four hour trip up there. Still no pain.
04/04/00: Get up to the Galena conference and set up the computer lab.
Nothing major happening so
I head to my hotel room.
04/05/00: PAIN!!!!!
Yep, you guessed it, went to sleep at 9:45pm after a very busy day setting up the
computer lab and woke up with a BIG ASS PAIN in my side just after 12:00am. Thought
to myself, "I can handle this, the doctor said it would hurt, that is why she gave me
the
prescription of Vicoden."
I just wish I got the prescription filled. Well, after rolling around on the bed for
3 1/2 hours,
I decide, what the hell, it worked last time, lets give it a try. So I get into my
truck and start
driving around at just past 4:00 in the very early morning. Not this time. I
think I pissed it
off. I get back to the Hotel and crawl into bed again. I decide that the
stuff I take for my
migraine headaches should take the bite out of this pain, so I take 3 of them. By
7:00am
they aren't doing a single thing for the pain. OK, 9:15am, I call the front desk
explaining I
have been "passing" a kidney stone since 12am this morning and can not stand it
anymore,
where is the closest hospital?
So I check into the Galena Hospital by 10:00 and they hit me with a shot of Morphine.
Doesn't do shit for the pain. So they hit me with Demerol. Ahhh, much
better. X-rays
here, there, and including a dye solution to help them see the stone. I don't care,
I'm doing
good after the two pain killers.
Congratulations Mr. Loy, you have a kidney stone in your right kidney. Lets pump you
full
of IV's to help flush it out. Sure, what the hell. Later that evening...Well,
no more pain, but
no sign of a stone. Don't need any more pain killers, in fact, I'm doing pretty good
and
sleep very well.
04/06/00: Well, it is 10:00am and haven't had any pain since early last night,
and was able to keep
breakfast down, (which is more than I can say for last nights supper). So they
release me
and tell me to be careful. No Prob. Go back to the Hotel and finalize things
with the
computers there, and start the 4 hour trip back home. Whoops, there is that pain
again,
nope, just a false alarm.
04/07/00: A couple tingles, but nothing major. Hell, after what I went through, this is nothing.
04/08/00: See Friday the 7th. Then it hits, 2:00am, (why is it always in
the sleeping hours?) I call the
doctors office, ask them what I should do and explain everything in detail about the last
couple of days. I decide today's pain isn't worth another trip to the emergency
room, and
will call the specialist. Well of course they are closed through the weekend and
will open
promptly at 8:30am on Monday, but the answering service says she can get the doctor on
call if I want her to. I look at the time and say I can handle it, I will call later
to schedule
an appointment.
04/09/00: OK, this is getting tiresome. A little after 3:00am this time,
but I skip calling anyone and just
get up to walk around a bit. (This always helped in the past). It works, the
pain goes away
once again and I fall back to sleep.
04/10/00: The Appointment
Well, I made it to Monday. Whew. This has been a mean couple of nights.
So I call the
kidney specialist and he has me come in today at 2:30pm to check me out. Well, after
a
couple of pokes and prods along with another detailed explanation of what has transpired
and pictures from the Galena Hospital, he finds that I have a UN-PASSABLE kidney
stone. Well that explains a lot! But it doesn't stop there. Of course
not. After all the IV's
up in Galena, and the GALLONS of water the doctors tell you to drink to help pass the
stone, I have managed to get this boulder out of my kidney through my little tiny itsy
bitsy
tube where it finally finds a resting place just before the opening into my bladder.
This of
course has a nasty habit of shutting down a kidney as it has no where to filter it's fluid
to.
"Are you doing anything tonight," he asks.
So, at 10:15pm, I walk into the O.R. and they put a IV into me, (by now my arm is start-
ing to look something like that of a junkies) and put me to sleep. Now the procedure
is
not too bad. They can not use sound waves to break up the stone as it is too low
into my
pelvic region. So this leaves open surgery, or, THE ALTERNATIVE. So understand
I
did not want open surgery, the recovery time is way to long and hard and there are way
more complications involved. And I am not about to go into detail for the procedure,
you
can look up "kidney stone" in you browser and figure it out yourself. But
I will give you
this one hint. The doc went in, grabbed the stone and pulled it out. By the
way, he told
my parents, and Cathy, that it was a about half the size of a kernel of corn when
most
people are in agony with the size of a grain of sand. All things being done, the
soreness
will go away, and I am very happy to have that thing out of me. I will say it
again. OUCH!
04/15/00: New Purchase
It seams after all the pain I went through the last week and a half, (and survived to talk
about it), I decided to treat my self to a new vehicle. I travel the state allot and
have put
some 162,000 miles on my 1992 GMC Jimmy. Still running perfect, but time for retire-
ment. So, not wanting to buy a new vehicle, I looked into used ones. The
requirements,
1) 4X4, 2) 4 door, 3) reliable. To me, this has Chevy written all over it. So
I took a
1996 Blazer out, nice ride, decent seats, but when the back windows are down, there is a
huge buffeting effect from the wind. Very disappointing. Of course there is no
way I'm
spending all that money and not be able to drive the truck with the windows down.
Fords
are out because lets face it, they are Fords! Which leaves me with Dodge. Ah
yes, the
Dodge Durango, big, beautiful, stylish! But still more affordable than a Lexus or
BMW.
And lets face it, a Hum-Vee just would not be practical. Yes, after the smoke has
settled,
the Durango won. It is a 1998 SLT which translates into "almost"
every conceivable
option there is except the moon-roof and heated outside mirrors and it only had 29024
miles on it. The leather seats more than out do those of the old Jimmy, but I have
to say
the gas mileage is a killer.
So what about the Jimmy? you ask. I kept it. I refinanced it last year to
bring the payments
down. As well as to get a much lower interest rate. Well, that, along with
the amount of
miles on it, I would have to pay the dealership an extra $2000 to take it off my
hands. The
Durango was pricey enough as it is, I wasn't about to throw another 2K on to it's price.
So, Cathy gave her 1988 S-10 Pick-up to her 17 year old son to drive back and forth to
school and work, (once he gets a job) and I gave Cathy the Jimmy who will put a whopping
8 miles on it per day. Not a bad retirement for the faithful thing.
10/07/00: The wedding day.
A wonderful church in my home town of Minier, the church is the same one Elmer and
Mary
(my Grandfather and his new wife) got married in. The services went very fast (the
way
we intended them to).
We started the ceremony at 3:00pm and was finished saying the "I Do's"
by
3:15pm. After the pictures were taken, we headed out towards the reception hall
located
in
the small town of Washington.
The
reception hall was decorated by Cathy's mother; Lee, and it looked absolutely beautiful.
10/08/00: Breakfast with the family and some close friends in Morton.
10/09/00: Head off on the Spirit Of Peoria
towards Starved Rock. This was a great boat ride. We left
at 9:00am towards the boat dock (after spending the night at the Mark Twain hotel) and
arrived in Starved Rock about 6:00pm. Think of it as a forced relaxation period as
there is
only three things to do on the boat; eat, sleep, and take pictures. And that's all I
did.
10/21/00: Went to the Bad Lands
Off-Road park with my cousin Steve. Talk about fun. Took the big D out
there and got it dirty. Climbed some dirt, sand, and rock. Drove through some
water and mud.
What a blast. Follow this link to see some
pictures.
Year of 2001
02/07/01: Oh, now I remember what this date is for! :)
10/07/01: First anniversary
Year of 2002
01/25/02: A painful day indeed, my job was removed from my person after 5 wonderful years.
02/07/02: And the years just keep on racking up!
05/15/02: Preparing for my trip with my cousin out to Moab, UT
05/16/02: Start the long journey out to Moab.
05/17/02 - 05/21/02: Whew, Steve and I drove straight through (well
Steve drove, I mostly slept...sorry Steve).
Did some great rock climbing and just generally had a blast over the last couple
of days. You can
check out the pics from my digital camera HERE!
09/12/02: Started working on the sideroom of my house. Holy shit
did I ever open a can of worms. Whoever
added this room on was an idiot X3!!! Pictures are HERE
of what we found after removing the wood
paneling. This is going to take longer than originally hoped.
10/07/02: Getting married in 2000 makes it real easy to remember how
many years we have been together, this
makes two.
Year of 2003
01/01/03: Happy New Year!
02/07/03: And another year bites the dust, but good news today, I start
a part time job at the local news paper
company (Peoria Journal Star) as a carrier (paper boy), hey, its a job!
04/14/03: Yep, that's right, I got my job at Mediacom Online. Not
too bad, get to be a Internet Tech Support
for people with Cable Modems. Yippee! Good money, great beni's, nice
hours...11:00am to 8:00
pm. Saturday through Wednesday though, so no more family functions for me
unless I can get some
one to trade days with me.
04/20/03: Last day at the Peoria Journal Star, now I can actually sleep. Whew, no more getting up at 2:30am!
10/07/03: Three year anniversary...Nope, she hasn't left me yet! :)
Year of 2004
01/01/04: Happy New Year...again!
Didn't do much this holiday, laid around the house played some games went to
bed.
02/07/04: Went out for supper with my parents, had a great time as I
normally do. Those years just keep on
racking up don't they.
04/14/04: Hit the One year mark at Mediacom.
10/07/04: Wow, and people say this marriage stuff is hard. I
would have to say it is very enjoyable! Of course
I am only 4 years into it.
10/18/04: Got a new purchase. Apparently my wife and parents do
not like the fact that I off-road my D
(Durango), so a friend of mine had this truck sitting in his front yard and
offered me a great deal.
So I jumped on it. It is a 1984 Ford full
size Bronco complete with lift and 36" KM Tires. Strong
engine, but the 'ol truck has seen some better days. I am going to try to
piece the thing back
together to make it road worthy....Stay Tuned!
Year of 2005
01/01/05: Happy New Year...again!
02/07/05: Yet another birthday...whew
04/14/05: Another year at Mediacom as a internet tech.
10/07/05: Yep, 5 years and going strong. Took her out for supper
at McDonalds. Don't think ill of me, there is
history there, that is where we went for our first date where we both had a Coke
and shared some
fries. She loved it!
Year of 2006
01/01/06: Happy New Year...It is amazing just how fast this day creeps up on you.
02/07/06: The Birthday, #37, Supper with wife and parents at Johnas.
02/11/06: Went to a bike show near Chicago, here are the pics. The Bikes
02/16/06: First tinges of a feeling...a feeling I have felt before...we will see if it turns true
02/19/06: Yep, kidney stone! Stupid things!