I created a graph of the monthly # of posts since inception. 

The Three C’:  Cows, Clowns and Cohen

The comments section of Tim’s blog was a very intimate area….like a dinner party v. the Woodstock feel that it now has.  There was a small cluster of cow posts/comments that I thought I would share:

That’s all of my retrospective. We’ve some good posts in the hopper that I’ll publish later so please check back!

I now have a real appreciation for the amount of work that goes into keeping a dynamic blog going. This community and Tim have been very kind in their praise.  I thank you for that and appreciate your patience during my occasional gaffes and misdirects, during this time.  It means much.

Did you know that Tim has never been away?  I've "known" Tim for almost five years. This blog was one of my first blog homes.I don't always read/see every post, but I managed to catch his vacation announcement.  As  I'm quick to 'outreach' to Tim when I see something objectionable, I wanted to quickly outreach to lend a hand.  In extending an offer to help out, I soon realized the responsibility of it–particularly when I rolled out of bed later than normal one morngin and my first thought was, "OMG, I've got to get a blog post up."  I imagine that Tim's sense of that is 100% greater.  A blog such as this is about community, and I've simply given back to this community by volunteering to service as as editor while Tim is away. 

Blog as community…….Slope Fest

The idea of going to Slope Fest became the reality of going through this singular comment by Giledain.

"And the reason I'm going is to hang out with some of the best people I've yet to meet face-to-face, people to laugh with, to cry tears of joy with and to follow me out to the desert to howl at the moon with." 

No matter what material success we have in life, ultimately our life is enriched by the strength of our personal relationships with friends and family. My on-line friendships with several here will now be cemented through the joy of sharing food, drink and conversation in real time. Yes, that comes with the risk of all them finding out that I'm much thinner, smarter and younger on line than offline.  But the reward is that THIS event will be a memorable (hopefully not ignominious) time–and for any of us who cannot remember it, we'll have our Slope biographer, Biff, memorialize it.  If you are on the fence about coming, I hope that you'll take Giledain's words to heart.

Wrapping things up…..

So while I found a chance to exercise my plans for blogosphere domination, I realized that it was far too much work and responsibility.  Accordingly, I will happily go back to be a sometime contributor and frequent participant. However, before wrapping up, I want to embrace my dark side a bit and be somewhat indulgent of my inner despot, otherwise that persona might emerge as something more sinister.  I've elected to allow this persona to manifest a bit by giving a bit of a historical view of this blog.  In deference to the ADHD proclivities of many Slopers, I will break this up into bite size chunks.  I hope that Tim does not mind my taking this audacious liberty, but I think that the community might find that this brief retrospective gives a bit of historical flavor.

It is late Saturday morning in Paris, and tomorrow morning I leave after having been here for two weeks. For a notorious homebody like myself, this is the single longest time I've ever been in any one place that wasn't home in my life.

The trip has been made possible – and quite a pleasure – by my kind host, Royal with Cheese, host of the ETF Corner. He provided housing, transportation, many meals out, tour guide services, and emergency computer repair trips. The man is a Slope Saint, and I'm very grateful. He made Paris a lifelong memory.

I also wish to extend my gratitude to Leisa  and the guest contributors for preventing Slope from becoming a ghost town. Far from it, the traffic has actually been quite strong during the past two weeks. Although this will probably be my final post before I'm back in Palo Alto on Monday morning, I wanted to at least express my appreciation once more to Leisa. Her chance request to help out on the first day of my trip turned out, for her, to be a two-week commitment, and in some ways she's handled Slope better than I ever have.

As for the market……what can I say? Ironically, I scheduled this trip in early February of this year to honor my pledge to Royal that I'd like out to Paris when the market finally started to break. In fact, that was the market's bottom, and we've been doing nothing but climb ever since. The guys over at EWI seem to have reduced their expectations from (1) Apocalyptic to (2) Maybe-the-Dow-will-lose-100-points-one-day. It's pretty sad.

My bullish declarations on XHB turned out to be well-founded, as real estate continues – – inexplicably – – to go bananas. And my bearishness on HHH is working out, as that ETF was able to fall a meaningful amount even on Friday. But, generally speaking, the overall bearish case is getting increasingly fragile, as major ETFs keep exploding to new highs driven by forces that seem beyond the explanation of charts.

I'm going to look at the market with fresh eyes on Monday, once I'm back in the land of Goldman and the home of the Geithner. Until then, thanks, everyone, for making my vacation free at least of my concerns about this blog. It went well.