Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Mystery Trip Revealed

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I’ve been quite coy about what I’m up to this weekend, but now all can be revealed: a couple of months ago, I got an invitation in the mail to Tom Sosnoff‘s 60th birthday party. It was very deliberately a surprise party, and Tom has been such a big part of my life, I decided to do something I hardly ever do and make plans to travel on my own. I kept checking in with the crew at Tastytrade, and Tom had no clue what was forthcoming. Needless to say, it was quite a grand fete.

0304-sos

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Oil’s Steady Drip

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I’ve been quite obsessed with oil for months now, although it’s challenging, because black gold itself has been absolutely range-bound for no fewer than three solid months now. The good news, I think, is that the opportunity for a break is getting closer, as shown below. We must close beneath that lower red line, however. The cartel is doing a yeoman’s job of keeping the price at more-or-less $54 for countless weeks.

0304-oil

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Apologia

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As I begin my Trip of Mystery, I feel the need to apologize.

This emanates, i suppose, from a terrible incident last night. I was driving in the evening hours with my family when a black cat leaped directly in front of my car. I hit it and, I’m sure, killed it.

This just broke my heart. I am not the killing type. With the exception of mosquitoes and flies, I try to do what I can to preserve living things. Over the course of my life, I have removed with my bare hands countless spiders and insects from inside the house (usually walking in the bathtub or sink) to the outdoors where they can live out a normal spider or insect life. If I’m walking a spider from a second floor bedroom to gently place it on a Camellia leaf outdoors, I’m surely not going to want to kill a fellow mammal.

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