"We came together, but we will leave here one by one."

Kurt is gone. He left Sunday night. We gave him an awesome send off (it involved Tenacious D, Particle, and Dragonforce!). I've seen other people leave. I remember last year saying good bye to our sister stage and realizing that most of the people I would be meeting over the next year would have no idea who these people were. Now it's our turn, and it's sadder than I ever imagined.

It could be that with Kurt I've lost my best friend in country, but I really feel like we're at the end now. When we were leaving stage to go to post after swear in, it was me, Alex, Alison, Djimi, Kurt, and Cathy in the car together. Someone (I think it might have been Alex) said something along the lines of "And so ends that chapter." At the time it felt really appropriate. I imagined our car drving away from the training site as being the last shot at the end of an episode of the tv show of our lives or something. You know, really cheesy bullshit like that. But it felt impressive.

If my life consisted of a series of books, I feel like I'm in the last chapter before it's time for the next book. All that's left is to wrap up my work, introduce my replacement in my village, and then there's my travels to get back home. Okay, there might be some other recent developments too. My point is, one of the things that is really scary right now is that I don't really have any inkling of what lies beyond that next title page. There's lots of little plot threads, but none of them show any indication of where they are going. Not to mention the major setting change! This has been my favorite book so far (I see my life as having been 4 books up till), what if the next one totally blows.