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Back to 911

I've now been doing transcripts at Longmont's 911 for 9 years. It's changed a lot from burning CD's for all the attorneys to a completely digital process, and going from tracking all the phone and radio traffic for an incident to nothing but the initial phone call. It's also gone from doing maybe half a dozen to doing sometimes upwards of fifty a week. I was very glad that there were only twenty something this week, so I wasn't much more than an hour. Having a lot of practice helps. 

It was odd, though, going to the bulk store for dried soy beans and the library and not really needing a mask. A few people were still going about with them, but with the positivity numbers so low and the county and state mandates gone, I think most folks were feeling that it was okay to be without. And I realized, especially during the latter part of the road trip, that I rarely actually get within six feet of anyone for any amount of time, much less ten minutes on most errands. So it was nice.

Lunch was the red beans and rice from last night, and I painted some, played Hades some, and baked another loaf of sourdough.

I'd set up the dough yesterday, doing a completely new technique, where I feed my starter, but use only 60 grams of the woken up starter to make the dough (375 g water, 375 g bread flour, 125 g whole wheat flour, 10 g salt). I fold it at least four times, last night I did five, and then let it just sit on the counter overnight. By this morning it had more than doubled, so I shaped it, and because of my teeth, I plopped it bare into a bread pan that was just sprayed with a bit of Pam. No cloth or flours to keep it from sticking, as I wasn't using the pan as a banneton. I covered it and put it in the fridge while I went to 911, so after lunch I actually took it out of the fridge, put it in the incubator for another 40 minutes, and then heated the oven to 350.

I put a pan in the bottom of the oven, and when it was all to heat, I put 2 cups of boiling water into it (careful to not splash any of the water on the oven glass) and then popped the loaf into the oven. I should have slashed it. But it popped the side and rose dramatically. The bottom crust is much softer this way, and the top, while it has a little chew, isn't the dense crust that happens when I use the Dutch oven and coat it with rice flour or a mix of wheat and rice flour. It turned out super tasty, and John was inspired to make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. I was really grateful.

I seem to have picked up an eye infection, as my left eye is super inflamed, and my left sinus is stuffed. I have a bit of a headache and I'm really hoping that the steroids haven't depressed my ability to fight it off too much. We'll hope. 

The weather has turned nasty tonight after being a very cloudy day. I hear a lot of snow and rain falling. So tomorrow should be interesting.

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