"Thank You" Gone Bad

This year I have done a great job of sucking up to our "hard to reach" custodians. They have helped me in so many ways! I was able to go from desks to all tables in my classroom, get a pull-down projection screen, and have the scrub the floor after I moved some cubbies into a new arrangement. Plus today one of them gave me a cold bottled water because the cafeteria forgot to turn on the ice machine last night! They love me, what can I say?

So I decided to show them my thanks by taking half of a Chocolate Chip Pound Cake for them to enjoy tomorrow. I was really excited, because I've been meaning to do something for about a week now, but have not gotten around to it. I even told the one that gave me the bottled water to look forward to a treat tomorrow. I stopped by the store on the way home for the ingredients then after dinner started my baking adventure.

Well, as you may know, our house is about 27 years old and has the original oven that was put into the house. Here's a picture:
When we first moved into the house, I realized that the oven cooked faster than normal. One night I made a cake that normally takes about an hour to cook and it was finished in 35 minutes, even after turning the heat down. Since then, I have noticed that it is an off and on adventure in baking, and lately it's been taking longer than normal to bake, rather than shorter amounts of time.

As I was cooking the Chocolate Chip Pound Cake (yes, this is your favorite Cliff, and I was going to bring 1/2 of it to group tomorrow night...) I realized that it was smelling wonderfully after about 10 minutes of the 45 it normally takes to bake. After about 25 minutes, I took it out to check it because of the smell and saw that it was no where near done, without even needing to test with a toothpick.

After noticing this, I decided to let it bake the entire 45 minutes. After that time I took it out to see that the top was burned a bit. In order to salvage the rest, I cut the burned part off, still in high hopes that the rest would taste just fine. Here's some of the burned part:
Then I took the normally moist and wonderful cake out of the pan. Here's what it turned out like:
Guess I'll have to try again another day for the "thank you". This cake is apparently not going to work out. Plus, my amazing husband has already called the appliance guys to come fix the oven. Isn't he great?