more disasters in cooking;)

Yup, it's true.  I had more disasters this weekend in cooking. But it happens to the best of us (and the worse of us, too).
Here's the latest. Every Memorial Day weekend Sunday, I make a big to do over the Sunday dinner. I know I'm not going to cook a big meal on Sunday until after Labor Day - and since it's my love's birthday weekend (usually), I try to make it special.
This time it was going to be roast chicken. I had a nice Purdue Oven Stuffer and I was looking forward to roasting and eating the chicken.
So I prepped the chicken and put it in my slow cooker. This slow cooker has a light on it so you know you turned it on and I made sure it was on. I baked some bread in the bread machine and it smelled pretty good. It didn't occur to me I couldn't smell the chicken. My sense of smell is not that good, but still......
About 7 hours later, I decided to remove the chicken from the slow cooker so we could eat supper. When I turned the chicken over (I roast mine breast side down so all the juices drip into the breast), I noticed the pop up timer was not popped up.  I thought that was weird. Than I stuck the chicken with a fork. It was still raw inside. Definitely not cool.
I debated whether to try and nuke it or put it in the oven, but my fear of having a chicken sitting out on a very warm day and the chicken stayed raw made me decided to trash the chicken as well as the slow cooker. I was not a happy camper, I had to rustle up some canned chicken breast and make a quick chicken and rice dish. Not what I wanted, but what could I do? Just the thought of eating that chicken turned my stomach, so I figured it wasn't worth it. 
Now my slow cooker has died without even giving me a warning. I got to start the process of finding another slow cooker. If anybody's got any suggestions on brands or types of slow cookers, I'd be glad to hear them. 

But I do have photos of my love's birthday cake. It turned out fine the second time around.