what i'm watching right now: an engineering student here at columbia university brought his dance dance revolution mat to campus, and is playing the game via his laptop in the middle of a secluded courtyard next to the engineering library (where i currently sit). the only thing i can figure is that he's either madly in love with the game, or this is the way he gets some exercise. either way, its fun to watch.

Hey Neal, how can I update the photo of myself on my BIO page? I want to use this photo now.

Hello, I have returned, my stay in C.Rica was short but oh so eventful and I did manage to learn a few things while I was away....

1. Always and I mean always check the seams of the mattress that you sleep on.

2. Be sure that you are saying what you mean and meaning what you say when you start to confidently practice your spanish with a cab driver  :o)

3. Milk comes in boxes down there, what a beautiful thing!

4.  The gender of most animals in humid climates is painfully obvious, the locals never get tired of pointing this out, best to act confussed and innocent they get a kick out of it.

5. "Ants in your pants" has a very personal meaning for me now, so does "Ants in your shirts, socks, shorts and shoes".

6.  When you can't decide between the coconut fish soup, that the chef swears is delicious, and the trusty beans and rice, just ask yourself this first "Do I usually enjoy drinking water right out of my fish bowl?" 

7. If you were a sea turtle walking on the beach your footprints would look like ATV tire tracks, really. 

8. Volcanoes can help one to get in touch with their inner dinosaur. 

P.S. Please excuse my tardiness....Welcome Big A!

*if you would like a FREE customized version of this wallpaper to match your screen resolution, just place an order in the comments on this post!

dog in the park 1:

dog in the park 2:

neal in the park:

not in the park:

Congratulations Alyssa!!!...However, a new vote is in order since the Indocilis bylaws state that there can only be 8 members of the Indoblog. We have implemented the same computer analysis used in the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) and it has shown that Corey has had the weakest showing on Indocilis.

Therefore, the new vote is as follows:

Welcome Alyssa, Corey Go Back to Minnesota (4 votes)

Corey Stays, Alyssa Waits til Next Season (4 votes)

A tie shall remove both in the vote from Indocilis, and the 8th spot will be offered to Jeremy Piven. 

Voting will end Thursday, Sept 21st, at 10 PM GMT -5.

alyssa should be a part of indocilis: 9 votes

maybe next year: 2 votes

WELCOME ABOARD ALYSSA!

great work cojepak or whatever.  not only have you un-necessarily alarmed the innocent citizens of indo-land but your reckless political mongering has had far reaching affects!   these can be seen (here) , (here) ,  (here) and (here).  the people of our great blog are not unaware of your irresponsible filanderings and they will, im confident, turn-out en masse to this illegetiment "election" and resoundingly defeat this puppet of a measure introduced by your shameless spokespeople.

down with cojepak and up with humanity.  do it for the children! viva the same old same old! down with change! up with safety and predictability! boo to rabble rousers! yay for an old face!

_{*paid for by the "citizens who think that cojepak is way to progressive for anybody with any decency and/or taste" committee.} 

nothing exciting, but here are a few pictures from the other day.

 in other news, here is my hair:

Congratulations, Alyssa.  You have earned the full support of CoJePAC, the world's most rugged political action committee.  Naturally, your status as an oppressed weakling drew us to your cause, but it was your ability to essentially pull Neal's pants down in front of the whole school that won our full endorsement.  Your instatement as a full posting member of Indocilis is little more than a formality now.  Our resources are too vast for even Neal to oppose.  Not to mention the fact that Neal has other problems right now, like how to prevent you from hacking into the mainframe and barring him from his own site! 

In support of Alyssa's patriotic act of freedom, cunning, and justice for all, CoJePAC calls for an official vote to bestow full membership upon Alyssa from this time forward.  Hollye, please set up and post one of your polls for us to vote on our newest member. This will be a proper election: the polls should be open for one day only from 8AM to 6PM.

at first, i really enjoyed the flavor sensation of the yoo-hoo chocolate beverage that i just consumed. but then i looked at the label. who knew that yoo-hoo contained partially hydrogenated soybean oil? not me! i wish i didn't have to say this, but... boo-hoo to yoo-hoo! i want you like you, but i just can't.

...

earlier today we were killing a few minutes before we were scheduled to meet up with alex to watch the us open finals. in those few minutes i decided to do a google search of myself... "hollye chapman". the first thing that i noticed was that there were results that were unrelated to basketball, which i thought was kind of cool (most of the non-basketball stuff was about design). there was one search result that turned out to be pretty hilarious.

so... back at osu i designed a letterhead in one of my classes. and what a is a letterhead for? letters, of course. but when you're designing a letterhead you don't care too much about what exactly the letter says, as long as there is some text on the page so you can see how it looks. usually this means grabbing any block of text that will fill up the page pretty well. so that's just what i did... went to a random website and copy/pasted some of the text into my letterhead.

now, being that i was at osu, i went to the computer lab to test print my newly designed letterhead. i guess at some point i inadvertently left a printout of the letter in one of the printers. one of the guys working there eventually got a hold of it, and posted about it on their forum/blog... check it out.

reading that gave me a pretty good laugh to say the least... especially with the comments left by other users!

also, if you search for "hollye anna chapman," kittybomb.com comes up! fantastic!

glory glory glory!!!!

Hello Indocilites,

I may have traveled to Ecuador this summer for 5 weeks. If anyone is interested in hearing about it on this piece of web space, leave a (+) vote. If I get 5 (+)'s, I'll try to think of something interesting that may or may not have happened in the South. If I get 5 (-) votes, I have heard that Jos is going to write a story about Japan. If neither of those occur, I guess nothing interesting will happen.

we just this morning got some great news! neal got the teacher's assistant position that he had been lobbying for all summer! this means a lot to us for reasons financially, professionally, and personally. so "yay" for that!

also, we are staying in a great sublet for the month of september. its in the east village, which is near where i occasionally work (at kiss me i'm polish). its an area with many cool and tasty restaurants, its close to the subway, and there is a hoppin' night life. but one of the best things is that we can't hear any street noise from inside the place. here are a few photos:

we hung out with alex last night. he is doing quite well, and its fun to have him close by. tonight we're going out for 1/2 price sushi with a friend and classmate of neal. it should be fun.

until next time...