Having sat around on my ass all day, and not feeling any better for it, at about 8:00pm tonight I decided to go for a walk.

I admit that I had ulterior motives for the walk; I was going to go to the bank and deposit a few paychecks, and I was also thinking of going to Blockbuster and attempting to secretly rent SSX3, which if anybody's bought it for me I don't know yet.

I made it to the bank, although I found out when I got there that I needed my checkbook to deposit my pay to my checking account, so I couldn't do that right then.

I made it to Blockbuster, although I found out that they'd already rented out all their copies of SSX3. So despite temptation to rent FFX-2, I did not do so, and in fact I rented nothing at all.

I even made it back to Greg's afterwards. I figure I walked at least a mile and a half. I say this because I'm pretty sure it's about a mile between my apartment and here, and I walked more than that by a decent bit.

Anyway, while I was out walking, I walked past Nick's fraternity house. This started me thinking.

You see, I haven't seen Nick since mid-January, in the middle of the night, when he left to drive back to Florida, preparatory to going to Basic for the Army.

This is quite some time.

I've talked to him a few times, but not much; I don't think I've talked to him since May at the latest.

Now, I've been hearing for the last month at least that Nick was in Kansas City, and he was staying at Oger's. Or something. At any rate, in order to talk to Nick, it would be necessary for me to mend a few gaping injuries in my relationship to Oger.

You might, if you have been a dear and faithful reader, recall that mid-February, Oger got his panties in a twist about something that was none of his business. At any rate, that was how I felt at the time. To be sure, things probably looked somewhat different from his point of view.

The long and the short of it was that I was really pissed off at him, and I stopped talking to him, and Greg had some sort of conversation with him that had even stronger repercussions.

So in my grand eighteen-year-old wisdom, I decided to look up Oger's phone number online and call him.

And much to my surprise, I actually succeeded.

I didn't talk with him for very long; just some smalltalk, and then he said he had to go get ready for meeting a group of people.

One subject that I brought up, however, was Nick.

Oger said that yes, he was in town... well, sort of. He was at Fort Riley, and in the next few days - as in, presumeably before Christmas - he was going to be shipping out to Iraq.

Tangent: According to John-Boy's diary, it seemed as though Fenton was also going to be shipped out to Iraq. So you might see how this could be further upsetting news. End tangent.

So I'm not entirely happy, as I can't get ahold of either of these two guys to find out what's going on. I've sent Nick a few messages over Yahoo, so if he ever gets online maybe he'll see them. I also told him in them that I was going to be in Florida, so if he ever came home to see his family, maybe he could come hang out with me, too.

But I've been sending him messages for a while, and I haven't heard anything back from him.

And the Fort Riley website doesn't seem to have a people search function.

Why do we have to be at war? The big one and all the small ones?

Why are my friends going off to distant countries, to see beautiful and different places, to meet exotic and unusual people and kill them?

I found out this past month that Evan had gone to Iraq. On reflection, it wasn't surprising; hell, he's in the Marines, it was more likely that he'd go than that Nick or Fenton would. But Evan was never one of my great friends, he was one of Rachel's friends, and not even one of her particularly close friends.

Evan, who was referred to in that group as CopperCrotch, among other less kind names, who was a supreme idiot at times, has gone to war and killed people.

I'm going to guess that that matured him a bit.

I never really knew Evan, but even if I had, I don't think I would know him now.

So what about Nick and Fenton? I haven't talked to either of them much lately, Nick admittedly less than Fenton, but do I even know either of them anymore?

I don't know if I do, and I'm afraid that means I don't.

I don't even know when the last time I talked to Fenton was, although I'm pretty sure it was sometime in December.

It's terribly depressing.

Why the small wars? They're the ones between individual people, the ones that are fights, or even the ones that are just two people drifting apart.

I'm tired of being lonely.

I'm tired of losing the first friends who came to me quickly.

Dammit, can't things go back to the way they were?