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I love Halloween! Even more, I love the day after Halloween when all the candy’s half price.

Plus, I can hardly wait to be free of the odor of pumpkin spice. Pumpkin spice belongs in only two places: in a pumpkin pie or in the landfill (a/k/a tip).

Looks like a kitty. If it is supposed to be a kitty, you did a good job. Especially if you still have all of your fingers.

Pumpkin looks good! Been watching horror movies all month for Halloween Month, kinda burnt out now :+)

I hate it when they mess with the clocks, there’s no good reason for it anymore.

Well Stoaty, I think your spooky-cat pumpkin looks good. The mouth is just right. I bought candy but I have no idea how many kids live in our little rural subdivision. A school bus goes by twice a day but I have never seen any children outside playing or riding bikes.

We Fall Back a week later, on November 7th. I took the spring forward rather badly this year (and we are 500 miles north of where we’d been for the past 20 years), so I am ready to get my hour back. Plus I like to spend some time stargazing every night.

I saw two flights of warbirds in late twilight this past Tuesday heading west then changed to northwest. Precision flying and perfect turns. I just couldn’t quite tell what they were, darn it.

I love Halloween just to see the little kids in their costumes, especially the ones who have done it maybe twice before, know what Halloween is and are really excited about it. Some are just in it for the candy, but some kids really love the costumes and the fantasy. I also enjoy seeing mom or dad standing back a few feet behind trying to keep the circus under control without interfering – happy that the kids are enjoying it, like they did when they were little.

I do a pretty mean Jack O’lantern too (although I lack Stoaty’s artistic skills).

However, Mrs Vegetable (who is Japanese) is somehow weirded out about the whole business of total strangers knocking on your door every five minutes, and is too polite to practice portion-control, so kids with fast hands eat great and woe to the slow!

So…..sadly, we turn out the lights, the pumpkin remains un-carved and uninviting, and we usually go out for dinner and drinks until the whole thing blows over, around midnight.

🙁

We turned on the porch light at four o’clock this evening, and I poured the 4 lb bag of Hershey mix into my bread bowl, and set it beside the door. But no children. I’m sure they were all at a church parties. So who will eat the little Hershey bars, Reese’s cups, Cookies & Cream bars, and Whoppers? 😉

Dang shame that more kids didn’t show up for the trick or treat.

OT: the beginnings of another Canterbury Tale?

This is pretty big breaking news in the drug research world.

University of Kent discovers effective Covid treatment, a PPP (pentose phosate pathway) inhibitor called benfooxythiamine. Inhibiting the PPP stops the virus from replicating, by not supplying the ribonucleotides the virus needs. I wonder if it might stop most viruses from replicating.

Another paper shows benfooxythiamine works even better with 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2DG), itself a helpful treatment.
https://www.collabovid.org/paper/10.1101/2020.08.19.257022

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/kent-identifies-novel-covid-therapy/

This one might bear watching, but it will take time. Thiamine is vitamin B-1, and benfotiamine is a synthetic version of thiamine that can be absorbed very quickly, but I do not know how the molecule with an extra oxygen group added works.

Interesting, Drew. Especially if it’s a general antiviral, of which we have so few.