attention gourmands

i'm trying to come up with a menu for a future dinner, and i'm worried i'm going too citrusy; i present to you my ideas for comment.

mixed greens with mandarin oranges and orange-champagne vinaigrette
i don't want to say it's my "signature" salad, since that sounds incredibly pompous, but it certainly is my default salad -- it's easy and always comes out right, so there's never any fuss. (word to the wise: it's very easy to get a nice emulsion using Trader Joe's Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar, and it's absolutely delicious -- just the vinegar, some good olive oil, and plenty of coarsely ground black pepper.) on the other hand, i could easily enough do a different salad.

chicken breasts with chanterelles in lemon thyme cream sauce
because one of the guests is a meat-n-potatoes sort, i need to cook something involving animal flesh. (amusingly enough, i'm really much better with vegetarian cooking. i'm never quite sure when meat or poultry is properly done.) this is my best original dish, however, and one i think is well worth showing off. note that this dish doesn't actually contain citrus -- the lemony note comes from the lemon thyme.

fresh green beans with a touch of lemon oil
i stole this idea from The Last Supper Club; they were absolutely lovely. but too much lemoniness?

another side dish?
i usually only make one side dish with my main course, but perhaps there should be two here?

fresh bread
of course.

dessert of some sort
not sure yet. i have citrus on the brain right now because i bought a bunch of beautiful meyer lemons yesterday and i'm dying to do something lovely with them. (i have lots of eggs on hand... perhaps i will make a tart or pie tonight.) however, for the dinner i'm thinking i should probably go in some other direction.

thoughts?

good news/bad news

good news: i figured out how to get my laptop open.

bad news: i damaged the case in the process.

good news: i was able to fix the flaky keyboard connector.

bad news: i wasn't able to fix the flaky power jack.

good news: i got the whole thing back together.

bad news: i had four screws left over.

good news: she booted right back up, no problem.

bad news: apparently my explorations broke the power jack completely.

it's out of warranty. i wonder which would cost more: sending it back to HP for service, or finding someone local? any suggestions from those more versed in laptop repair than i am?

update: i spoke to HP, and they said my only option through their service department is to have them replace the motherboard, which would cost $649. which is half what i paid for the whole damn thing in the first place. so i guess my options are to pay someone to take the whole thing apart and see whether the jack can be reattached -- which may not even be doable -- or to buy a new laptop. which i don't think i can do. and i can't find out quickly, because whether i can do it or not depends on how much i owe on my taxes, which i need an accountant to determine, which will probably take longer than i can reasonably go without a laptop. and i can't get one from work, partly because there aren't any, and partly because my boss is playing golf in jamaica for the next week or two.

*sigh* it's really rather remarkable how my laptops always seem to break at a time that doesn't allow me to take my time comparison-shopping for a new one. i bought this one because my previous one died the same day as i got a contract job that required me to have my own laptop.

did i mention, it only has 30% left on its battery?

*beats head against desk*

further thoughts on the computer issue

so here's the thing. what i need is not necessarily a laptop, but anything that's sufficiently modern to run XP and deal with RoboHelp and P4Win via remote desktop without gagging. portability would be nice, but is not a necessity.

meanwhile, i've been spending every weekend lying in bed with my laptop reading potterfics, which is not good for me.

my current desktop, a five year old emachines, has been solid as a rock, not one single problem. and a very studly new emachines desktop would cost $600, which i can just about manage. it would also run sims2, which the laptop would've gagged on.

hmmm. perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something.