With news of raging wildfires and triple digit weather, we decided to stay cool indoors these past weeks. I kept myself occupied with some small grant submissions and photo editing, while Melody was babysitting our niece’s betta fish and cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Sadly, our year-old refrigerator was also feeling the heat exhaustion, as the top-shelf butter turned into mush. While awaiting the GE repair man to arrive, we smuggled blocks of dry ice from lab to keep our big pot of bun rieu from turning sour, although the irregular chill zone turned our rice to ice. We were relieved to find that it was just a broken fan that was easily replaced, and I used my morning off to meet our contractors to plan out our renovations. This also meant cutting out a few big deposit checks, which along with ordering the bathtub, appliances, and fixtures, made a sizable dent in our bank account. Meanwhile, the release of the new Windows 10, touted as “the last version of Windows,” also kept us busy as we upgraded both our desktops and SP3’s. While the clean interface and renewed start menu were welcomed features, my favorite update was the ability to delete without a confirmation dialog. I also discovered new Gmail features including new keyboard shortcuts, auto-advance after reading, and a plugin called Boomerang which returns emails to my inbox after a specified time or if I got no response. It’s amazing how much productivity could be enhanced with just a few small changes.