What happens when you put a plastic plate in a 350 degree oven?

So today I was making brownies for my roommates' bake sale on Monday. I mixed the batter and was pouring it into three metal cake pans when I noticed that smoke was coming from one of the burners on our stove. "Um...why is our burner smoking?" I asked.
Cassie looked up from her studies. "Is something in the oven?"
"Well, the oven's preheating," I answered, "but there's nothing in th-- .....Oh crap."
It was then that I remembered that Brittany, our other roommate, had left the waffles she had made that morning on a plastic plate in the then-cool oven. So what did I do? Well, first I turned off the oven. And then I went for my camera of course. We successfully rescued many of the waffles, but as you can see, the plate had turned into its own form of modern art.


Here we see Brittany displaying the art as Cassie scrapes at the oven rack in the background. (Actually there wasn't much plastic stuck on the rack itself. Most of it had dripped onto the heavy duty foil we had put on the bottom of the oven when we first moved in.)

Thank goodness we had foil on the bottom of the oven! We were able to just take this part out and throw it away.

Here are Brittany and Cassie looking sadly at the hot oven rack and melted plate, which we put outside to cool off.
Brittany: "Darn it Angela, that was my 50 cent plate!" :)

Me looking at the rack and plate, thinking, "hmmm maybe next time I should check the oven before I turn it on..."

Ah, the adventures of college life. :)

Yume no Tsubasa

Which means, "dream of wings." Has anyone else ever dreamed of flying? I do all the time. I can almost tell you exactly how it feels to flap your wings up and down, to watch the ground shrink below you, to feel the wind sliding by on either side of you. Often in my dreams, I fly to escape things. I'll realize that I'm in trouble somehow, and so I just jump up and take off. Other times, I'm flying toward a goal--something that I need to get to quickly. I've watched the world turn sideways as my wings tilt my body this way and that in the wind. I've felt the rush of swooping downwards and the bump of my feet connecting with the ground again as I land. Once I even had a very vivid dream through the eyes of Hink, the main character in the book I am writing, as she fought through a magical battle high up in the air. I manuvered skillfully through the sky and hurled magic at the opponent through my staff. It was such an amazing experience, I was disappointed to wake up and find myself still tied to gravity.

(This picture is one that I've always liked from a user named MindTuber on deviantART.com)

One of my art professors once said that creative people often fly in their dreams. This may be true, or it may be that I have had a deep, longing desire to fly ever since I was a little girl. I used to pretend I had wings. I suppose that image has never left me. Whatever the cause, I am grateful to God for letting me experience something so amazing in my dreams. I like to think that when I get to Heaven, I'll be able to fly, just like I have so many times in my mind, over mountains and rivers, singing out joy to the Lord all the while. I guess I won't know until I get there. :)

In the meantime, I'll create characters to fly for me. Two of my main characters, a Light Mage and a Dark Mage, have wings. They were designed this way for the very reason that I have detailed above. Through them I'll explore the sky and express the joy of flying to anyone else who has ever dreamed the same way as I have. Here is an older picture of Hink and Mook that I have drawn, but one which shows them both in flight: