Further Preparations

Well, in the interest of being able to bake things in the future, I decided last night to find out what was wrong with the bake element in my oven. It hasn't worked since about November, and I have been unmotivated to fix it, as I have a toaster oven that works great for baking and broiling the smaller things, like frozen pizza.
However, for the larger things, I am going to need a functioning oven. So, with 30 minutes to spare before I had to crate up the furballs for their vet visit, I decided to pull out the burner and troubleshoot.
2 bolts held the burner plate to the back of the oven, so I removed those and pulled out the burner. And immediately found the problem.
One of the wires had broken. So, I pulled it out as far as I could to take a good look at it. It was a little charred around the end, and had broken loose from the crimped end.
At which point I had to stop, to take the kitties to the vet.
When I got back, being fairly good with manipulating metal, I removed the screw holding the end to the element, and cleaned it up. Then I cut the broken wire back to nice clean wire, stripped it, reattached the crimped end as tight as I could pinch it with my pliers, and then reattached the end to the element. Then I reassembled the oven, plugged the stove back in, and turned on the oven.
And the element heated up to a nice cherry red, just like it is supposed to! :)
I am excited about the oven working, however I am going to do some more research on oven wiring to be safe, but my repair appeared to have worked, and was stable at 350 degrees.
So, being tired after this, and having homework, I am afraid dinner was chips with cheese and salsa, with a Mexican beer.
This morning was yogurt again, and I brought leftover pizza for lunch, as I was in a hurry from having to give one of my kittens an antibiotic this morning, and had to resort to the frozen pre-prepared stuff as I ran out of time.
Dinner, however, will have something to do with eggplant! I have three of them that need to become something yummy.