8:15 a.m.
Well... it wasn't until I woke up this morning that I realized that it's New Years Day, and nobody even acknowledged it last night! I guess I shouldn't be surprised after seeing how these people pretty much ignored Christmas last week. But anyway... it's now 2005. Boy, now that I'm thinking about it, it sure is hard to top 2004 as far as being a year full of major unexpected life changes! I basically went from not being sure if Vicki was the one, to absolutely wanting to marry Vicki, to engaged to her, to single again, to island castaway, to member of this special community of chosen people! Definitely not something I could've ever imagined a year ago!
Anyway, we'll be heading out on our second scout mission in a little while, but Richard is mixing the teams up a bit. Aldo pointed out to Richard that he would've known what to do with the dead bodies that Jim and I found yesterday if he'd been with us, and that this is why two inexperienced people shouldn't venture out together. So I'll be paired up with Aldo for this next mission. And I've convinced Richard to let us go investigate the Oceanic survivors' beach camp to see if any of them are still there. It's potentially dangerous, because we have no idea if all of them have left the Island, or if they're still living there and still view us as their enemies, or if some more soldiers from that freighter have taken over their camp. So Aldo and I will be going fully armed. But the reason I want to go there is because I've decided I'm now ready to face Vicki, if she's still on the Island. I'm hoping that she and the rest of her people made it safely off the Island so that we don't have to deal with them anymore, but if she is still here, then she deserves to know the truth before things get any more out-of-hand than they already have.
5:16 p.m.
Well, after a day of hiking, Aldo and I have reached the Oceanic survivors' beach camp, only to find it completely abandoned. It's almost like 40 people just disappeared into thin air. I guess they all left the Island on that freighter after all. I'm mostly relieved that this means we don't have to deal with them or any other intruders on the Island anymore, but I think a part of me is somewhat disappointed that I never got to confront Vicki and get some kind of decent closure with her. Oh well, it doesn't matter now. The more important question is whether John Locke went with them, or if he's still on the Island and considered our leader.
One thing that we quickly discovered from looking around the camp is that those people had apparently been stockpiling a lot of Dharma food and supplies. Aldo thinks they must've raided a recent supply drop that was meant for us and that this probably explains why our food supply was running low last month. So we're grabbing as much of the food and other useful supplies as we can to take back to the Temple tomorrow, and we decided we might as well spend the night at this camp, since we're here now and they're not. So we're basically getting a feel for how those people lived for 100 days.
Woah, dang, I just now noticed that there's a stack of porno magazines in this tent! Whoever lived in this tent obviously had his own priorities!