Argh, our "casual meet & greet" with Sales next Tuesday has gone from being lunch with additional meeting before hand to us needing to be there at 8:15am to sit through the whole morning session. Doable, but aggravating, not least because now I'll have to make the drive during rush hour (I have no idea what rush hour is like these days, but probably not nonexistent) after my usual Tuesday 6am work start because the stuff I do then will still need to be done. Bah.

Also, casually blocking out 5 hours of my time for their convenience with just a couple days notice is just intrinsically annoying but that is how Sales is, to a large degree. I would say "Men! and their Sales!" at this point but it's all women in leadership roles over there now.

Have you tried that lactaid stuff, Tep? I know some people swear by it.

This is my first week trying the lactose-free milk, but I'm going to get some Lactaid at the store this weekend and see how well it works.

we've been working on 2022 business planning for a few months now and it continues to be Who-the-fuck-knows?

I am so glad I work in eBooks and not in the part of the publishing industry that needs the paper product supply chain to...exist.

My advice for Lactaid is take one with the first bite of dairy food and then another one halfway through the meal (and maybe a third at the end if it's something like mac & cheese or ice cream). I keep a giant bottle on my kitchen table and sheets of the single-serve pills in my purse, in my car, in my desk drawer at work...

I really like So Delicious coconut milk (the kind that is like cow's milk in the dairy section) and I normally don't like yogurt but I like the coconut milk based yogurt.

If you like chocolate milk , according to M (who I'm pretty sure has some lactose intolerance and I try to get him to drink milk alternatives but he usually won't) Silk Double Chocolate milk is delicious and tastes like chocolate cereal milk,

So Delicious coconut based ice cream-esque products truly are delicious, IMHO. I never drank milk so I don't miss it, and cheese doesn't seem to bother me for which I am grateful. I know people who rely on lactaid primarily for cheese-eating purposes.

Ran into someone from IT who helped me with my monitor, woohoo! Now I just need my flu shot, to find someone who can give me my "vaccinated but if anyone asks that is not exactly what it means" sticker for my badge (and gift card), and probably more work because this day has turned out to be relentless with stuff coming up for me to do...

Well, the blood draw was worth the (minor) trauma. The lab and scan reports have already been released to the patient portal; the numbers look good and the scan looks good. PSA is staying low. No new mets. Existing mets are stable.

So the treatments are working as well as can be expected. The side effects of the treatments are still tedious and annoying and tiresome, but I am coping. My oncology consult is scheduled for Monday afternoon, where I'll learn whether I am reading these reports correctly, what I've missed, and what else can be concluded.

As a final bit of good news, my meds were delivered today. So that background worry is gone for another month.

I have celebrated with an ice cream sandwich. Now, back to the diet.

People are paying no attention to the one way aisles. There's so few of us here I'm sure it doesn't matter, but still.

Glad for the good news, dcp! And the ice cream sandwich

Good news, dcp!

I would be so pissed, meara. Ugh!

dcp, great news! Definitely worth the trouble of the blood draw!

My advice for Lactaid is take one with the first bite of dairy food and then another one halfway through the meal (and maybe a third at the end if it's something like mac & cheese or ice cream). I keep a giant bottle on my kitchen table and sheets of the single-serve pills in my purse, in my car, in my desk drawer at work...

Ah, good to know. I did have 1.5 oz. of colby-jack cheese (I know that seems oddly specific, but it was 3 cubes that were 1/2-oz. each) about an hour ago, and everything seems okay so far. (With milk on my cereal, or 1/2 and 1/2 in my coffee, it took maybe 30 minutes before things went very bad, so I think I can narrow down some cheeses that are friendly to me. But I will also get some Lactaid.)

I've had Silk's holiday nog (probably not actually egg nog) and liked it, and I've had So Delicious ice creams and think they're spooky magic for how good they are. It seems a lot easier to be lactose-free than gluten-free (although even that is fairly easy now).

It's nice pre-fall non-humid weather today, so I'm making a pot of chili with corn muffins for dinner. Of course, it's going back to stupid hot tomorrow, but I really want chili.