Bread machine

"Yes, I have seen the vast trenches in which the dead were buried--Russians, French, and Prussians, all together--men such as God had created that they might love each other, before the invention of plumes and uniforms, which divide them into factions for the profit of those who govern them.  There they are, they embrace each other now, and if anything lives in them, as we must hope it does, they love and pardon one another, and abhor the crime which for so many years has prevented them from loving each other before their death"--The Conscript

Yesterday we finally bought a new bread machine.  We found a bargain at Canadian Tire out near the Stock Yards.  It's a Breadmaster, and Moira says Margaret has the same make. (Which proves it's the best.) This model has a paddle that gets out of the way after it's finished stirring, so there's no hole at the bottom of the loaf, and a dispenser so you can add stuff like raisins at the beginning, instead of opening it up and adding them half an hour into the process.  The booklet has some interesting recipes like pumpernickel. (With our previous machine, which lasted over ten years, the booklet was missing.)

This afternoon I visited Giuseppe, my former singing teacher.  It's been almost two years since my last lesson, and I hadn't seen him since he retired from the opera and choir a year ago.  He was pleased to see me.  The subway was being worked on east of Woodbine station, so I did quite a bit of walking.

Going there and back I read some more of The Conscript, including the passage I quote above, which strikes me as very eloquent.  I'm getting closer to what I know will be the climactic French defeat in the "battle of the nations" at Leipzig.  Seems to me that Leipzig was an even more important battle than Waterloo:  the former brought Napoleon down, while the latter confirmed that he was finished.

We're almost finished Mark Cousins' cinematic history on Netflix.  But when we saw the last episode the other night, it gave out halfway through.  We tried seeing it again tonight, but it gave out again.  The U.S. government is now investigating the trouble with Netflix service! (Netflix and Verizon are blaming each other.)