Multitasking

Today, I was sort of like that old commercial: "I'm cleaning my oven!" You know--They're somewhere else, doing something else, and they'd look into the camera and say, "I'm cleaning my oven!"

Okay, I wasn't cleaning my oven.

It's just that it occurred to me at work today that I was sort of doing the same thing because I had two things going on at home while I was at work:

• I had my computer downloading movies (The DaVinci Code among others)
• I had my dinner cooking away in a crock pot.

I haven't used the crock pot in a while, and I felt the need for a mildly interesting smell to greet my nose when I got home from work. I had a small 2-lb. roast in the fridge and it was the perfect way to cook it. To make it happen, I did all the prep last night, cutting up potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery. I put everything except the meat and the spices into the removable crock filled with water and into the fridge. This morning before I left, I just drained the water, put it all together, and and refilled it with the right amount of water. The key to making it work though, is in my timer.

I have a heavy duty mechanical timer that's made for appliances like that. Here's a picture of it:

You just set the little buttons around the dial to the times you want it to start and stop, and plug it in. Unlike most timers like this, it has a 3-prong plug in it, so it's made for heavy-use items. I learned a very important thing the very first time I used that timer with my crock pot: Make sure to turn the crock pot ON. Yep, I went to work one day right after I moved here... Expecting to come home to a nice smell in the house and enjoy a nice dinner. It was stone cold. The timer was functioning perfectly, but the crock pot switch was off. I was both pissed and amused, and it firmly embedded itself into my mind: It will never happen again.

At any rate, tonight's dinner was great, and the movies all came in just fine too.