Ruminations on books

Brenna and I are currently reading “The Magician’s Nephew.” We just read the chapter in which Aslan creates the world of Narnia out of an empty void. After we finished reading the chapter, we ended up talking about the allegorical nature of the chapter (and the novel as a whole). Brenna already understands that Aslan represents Christ, and we talked about how this was like the creation of the world, with Adam and Eve being put into the Garden of Even.

As we talked about the biblical Garden, Brenna wanted to know what happened to it. We discussed modern-day LDS thoughts about the subject (Independence, Missouri, for example). Specifically, she wanted to know where the Garden of Eden was today. I told her that I didn’t think it was still on the earth. She thought for a moment and said, “I think Jesus took it away because it wasn’t needed anymore, once Adam and Eve left.”

I don’t know if Brenna’s right or not, of course, but her thoughts are as astute as any I’ve heard. I was just impressed with how hard she was thinking about the topic. I really like that not only are we reading a fun novel together, but it’s spawning interesting discussions between a father and his daughter.

Computers and hand grenades

Today was an utter fiasco at work. My computer has been running slow basically since day one, so IT decided to upgrade me to Windows 7 and see if that’d fix the problem. They said it would take a little over an hour, so I have them the go-ahead to do what they needed to. In fact, it took three hours, and even then I was left with a crippled computer. The video card (which allows for two monitors) isn’t compatible with Windows 7, and I lost all customizations, shortcuts, etc. that I had set up. Tons of work piled up while I was offline, and it’ll take most of tomorrow just to catch up.

While I was offline, I worked through some boxes of files, sorting the contents into “keep” and “recycle” piles. In the middle of thick wads of acquisition contracts from 2000 and 2002 I ran across a sheaf of photocopied papers. The first page was about CPR, and the second was about dealing with cuts and lacerations. The rest of the packet was about building homemade hand grenades, setting up automatic machine gun turrets, and even a whole page devoted to grenade-throwing techniques. It seems that back in 2002 or so someone really didn’t like their job.

Games

Brenna and I recently played through Chrono Trigger (she called it the “time-traveling game”). I think she was just old enough to really get the concept of the time-traveling, what with certain events in the past affecting things in the future. She especially liked Frog (“But his name’s really Glenn, Dad”). She actually bragged to Kristy when we beat the final version of Lavos. “Mommy, we killed Lavos, but it was only his shell. Then we went inside and killed the real Lavos!” Jonas watched a lot of Chrono Trigger as well; he liked Robo and called it the “robot game.”

Now we’re playing through the “Cloud” game (Final Fantasy VII). Just this evening we found out about the huge Sephiroth/Jenova connection and watched Nibelheim burn. Brenna seems especially enamored by Barret and Red XIII (the “experiment”).