28 February 2004 Last night rain descended from the sky all night. It was nice to listen to, to hear thousands of raindrops patter against the ground, so that they sounded like a great sheet of water as their sounds all blended together. Today it still rains, though they fall less frequently, so that I can discern the sound of one raindrop from that of another. If it were winter, it would have snowed all night, and all the schools would be closed, all the students and teachers delighted and the parents disheartened. We have been playing a game called Run Escape lately. Or maybe it is called Rune Scape; I always forget which. It could be either, because either you are fighting monsters and running and escaping, or because there are 'runestones' that one uses in magic. As for the title runescape, what exactly is a scape? There are a couple possibilities: it could be a stalk of a plant, as though the game is a place where runes 'grow;' or it could be landscape type of 'scape.' The 'scape' in landscape comes from or is at least akin to the Danish 'scape' (pronounced 'skape') which basically means "shape" and is certainly etymologically linked to the English word 'shape.' In fact, with these Danish words one doesn't always know whether they entered the English language through Danish, or whether they simply existed in both, because English and Danish are extremely close Germanic languages. If it's the latter 'scape/shape,' then it implies that the world is in the shape of a rune, which it isn't. I think that they are taking the term 'scape' and intending it to mean 'place,' so that 'runescape' basically means, 'a place of runes.' They are extending the definition of the term, which is a common and indeed probably inevitable feature of language. It is a fun game. You can 'do' all sorts of things in it: chop wood, light fires, make runes, use magic, fight monsters, cook, fish, mine ores and fashion items out of them, and other things. I suppose that much of it is like real life, except that the time is elapsed. There also various quests that one can go on. Anyways, this completes this entry. I'll begin another one soon. Thoughts and Events