that I seem to have gotten unstuck.  I loaded and ran the dishwasher and cleaned the sink  today.  Yay, me. Bought a BigMac while I was out and had that for dinner, though, so no cooking breakthroughs yet.

Also, plugged in piece of crap doorstop laptop and hit F11 a zilliion times at the same time.  Did NOT go into safe mode, but did start up correctly and is now working fine.  So far. Weird.  I tried doing F8 the other day, but that did nothing.  So now I  have two working laptops and the Macbook Pro that is also working.  All at the same time.  WooHoo.