Daily Elysium: AFK

I am a man with my hands placed stoicly upon my hips, chest thrust proudly forward, chin held high, and an expression of casual confidence upon my face.  Also I'm standing on a railroad track in front of a charging freight train, that's on fire, with giant metal spikes that will impale my confident form as easily as driving a nail through a stick of hot butter on a warm day.  Or so I sometimes feel.

If you are a regular patron to GWJ with an unhealthy predilection toward consuming my shabbily constructed throughts then you might be a little disappointed to know I'll be on hiatus for a while.  You might also consider professional help.  Read on, and I'll explain.

As many of you know, my wife and I are soon expecting our first child.  Yesterday we found out that soon is actually better describes as really damn soon, as in no later than Monday.  Having reached a point where I'm certain our physician fears for my life, because Elysia is going to kill me if she has to put up with being pregnant for much longer - I can see murderous intent in her eyes, and know I'm only alive to tell you about it now because I can run faster than her at the moment - we will be visiting the hospital for delivery on Monday if the course of nature doesn't send us sooner.  Of course, this means that we are inconsolably terrified and spend much of our day making nervous small-talk at one another.

"Wow, it's much colder than it was yesterday, and did you buy electrical plug covers like we talked about?" I say, and wring my hands nervously looking from the clock to a crumpled magazine, to the cat who decides not to stick around us right now after all.

"I was just talking to myself about how cold it was.  What it's like five, five and a half degrees colder?  I wonder what the temperature is in celsius?  I promise not to kill you by the way."  She responds in what I can only term a threatening and unstable manner. 

"Five degrees?  No, according to the seven hours of The Weather Channel I watched it's six and four fifths degrees colder than yesterday.  It's the coldest its been since May twenty-third, isn't that funny?"

"Hahahahaha, ouch."  She has a contraction and thinks about killing me.

I try not to speak while she's having contractions because I understand that at those moments, particularly while I'm feeling the need to prattle on about nothing in a nervous Woody Allen like way, I am the most irritating human on the continent.  Honestly, if I were her, I'd hit me with bricks.  This only gets worse as we get closer to having a child who will depend on us to keep him alive, a concept so laughably absurd as to seem impossible.  It occurs to me that much of my time in the near future will be dedicated toward making sure I haven't through action or inaction killed my son by perhaps putting on a diaper the wrong way, holding him the wrong way, or making a face at him that triggers a self-destruct procedure.

The long and short of this (ok, all long, no short) is that beginning next week I'm taking some time away from the site as we get used to having a small thing cry at and pee upon us.  But fear not, I'll be back before you know it, and I'm leaving you in the capable hands of Certis who is guranteed to slander my good name with a degree of comfortable regularity, Sway whose new column 'shapes that scare me' should be a hit, Pyro who will continue about the voices in his head the encourage him to begrudge copyright law and use Linux, and Spunior who will continue to be German.  I probably wouldn't trust these men with my life, but I would trust them to fix me a nice cappuccino without putting poison in it, so you're in relatively capable hands.

Play some video games for me while I'm gone.

- Elysium

Comments

I predict that this child will be the most literate kid in preschool, if only to learn how to understand it's father.

But whose grammar will I complain about now?!?

Congratulations, Ely, I hope everything goes smoothly for you and Elysia.  We'll keep the bed warm here.

>>But whose grammar will I complain about now?!?<<

Without me around to proofread Pyro's articles, you should have no worries. 

See how I like to engender a sense of resentment among my peers before I go?

Best of luck (etc.) to you, your wife and that little fella! (And maybe it's one of those rather non-hyperactive babies that won't keep you busy all through the night.)

I probably wouldn't trust these men with my life

Damn, you're smarter than I thought.

With Elysium gone, I can finally get to say, what I want, without worrying, because Elysium can't sotp my, freestyle writing! That's right, Elysium, your censorship of my, poor grammar, and punctuation will be stopped! See, thats my plan, I put my articles up and let my audience proofread them for me. I call it open source article development. Information wants to be free, especially when it helps me be lazy.

Okay...shh...now what we're gonna' do is, see, as soon as Elysium steps away from the site for a bit...oh man this is gonna' be so great...we're gonna up and move the entire server to a new URL. The Internet is a big place and I figure it will be some time before Father Knows Least can find us again. That'll fix his wagon. And what's up with wagons? They're like little boxes on wheels...too creepy thank you very much.

So you want me down there for Monday to deliver the little f*cker, right? I hope you've got a catcher's mitt and a spatula cause' I lost mine in the last delivery I did.

Well, Certis has come out as the longshot in the baby-name pool...unless Elysia is really into the name "little f*cker."

Congrats! The wife and I had our daughter 3 months ago. Some advice. The sleep thing, yea, it starts off bad but gets better pretty quickly.

Oh yea, and when she's delivering, don't makes jokes about it, she'll tend to be a tad insane at that point.

"Oh yea, and when she's delivering, don't makes jokes about it"

I didn't know I'd been giving off the suicidal vibe.

Pyro, that post made me cry

expecting our first child

Why must you pretend that I don't exist?  And where's Mom's child support check?

Good luck man.

Less than a week til Elysium/Elysia 2.0 Hits the shelves woohoo! (though 9 months between going going gold and manufacture and shipping is a hell of a long time)

 

Roll on V3.0!

 

Seriously though hope everything goes well for both of you!

I vote for Elysinho.  

Hmmm, I wonder if anyone who's not a soccer fan will understand this?

Oops, forgot to say congratulations & good luck to both Mom & Dad.  The good luck part is for the next 18 years, not just the delivery.

Good luck to you guys!  Hope the eviction goes well. 

Good luck!  So boy or girl or did I just miss it?

A little late, but congrats nonetheless Elysium and Elysia

Good luck with the whole.. kid... thing... 

Good luck to you.  I recommend you wear a cup during delivery, in case Elysia decides to radically alter your future fertility during her happy ordeal.

As for me, I will continue to feign deafness whenever my wife nags me about having children in her delightful little way.

Good luck with the delivery I hope the baby is in perfect health!

Any idea on what the name will be? Or did I miss that post somewhere?

Why Lysion of course!

Good luck and happy parenting!

I do believe it's a boy and they will be naming him Daniel.

Apparently "Certis" wasn't really an option.

Daniel is a good name.  No real good way to make fun of it in school, except for O Danny Boy and Danielle.

/me is named Daniel.

Good luck! We just had our first on the 4th of this month. It's a wonderful thing for sure.

"Daniel"? Elysium, what's wrong with good ol' "Mario"? "Sam Fisher"? Or even "Uthguard Son Of Elysium"! But Daniel? Dear god.

And yes, "Little f*cker" may be a nice nickname that Uncle Certis may use now and then, but I'm not sure it's legally viable.

(Congratulations and great luck! you're only 15 kids away from your very own quake Clan! )

A week ahead of schedule (as far as i remember, it was to be in October), I guess your kid knows that it best to make it presence before the release of HL2, or he will be doomed. Just kidding though...

Well, all i can say is congrats to both of you, Elysium and Elysia! I hope all goes well! Good Luck!

Congratulations Elysium and Elysia! I hope everything goes well!

Oh, and get yourself a nice cuban (cigar). Even if it is just to put in your mouth and prance around in a manly/very proud sort of way. I expect no less

Congrats and Good luck

good luck both (and soon all three) of you. I wanted to send a symbolic keg o'beer for celebration, but the comments mess this up. So we will raise a real pint over here to celebrate instead .