Amy called me around 12:30 on Monday afternoon. I wasn't surprised that she was crying, but I did not anticipate exactly what triggered it.

"That damn dog," she sobbed. "How do they know?"

Update: I just got off the phone with Cathy Jacobs from Time Warner Cable, who was holding a copy of this blog post. We had a mutually enlightening conversation, and she deleted the $30 fee and "past due" status, about which I was complaining.

The mistake was mine, but Ms. Jacobs agreed that my complaint was valid, and that Time Warner Cable's messaging about such transactions will be reviewed. She will also work to see that there is some access to the accounts receivable department when such access is warranted.

On Friday, I had pizza for breakfast, followed by pizza for lunch. Then for dinner, I had some more pizza, plus beer. Amy, by then, was already shunning pizza, leaving even more for me — including her anchovy pizza, which took on a slightly off-putting character in microwaved leftover form.

In between eating pizza and drinking beer, I was checking our Mileage Plus Dining accounts every few minutes, but seeing no reflection of our pizza purchase. What I did spot was an unsettling notice at the bottom of my account summary: "Please allow 5-10 days for miles to post." Gulp.

While American politicians bicker over whether to pass a clean energy bill, people in India are really feeling the heat these days. Today's Weather Underground forecast for New Delhi called for a high of 111° F. going up to 114° F. for Monday.

As death's irrevocability begins to sink in, there is next the problem of how to remember the person. Complexities and contradictions must be trimmed down into a small, neat picture — an icon — which captures that essence so we can store it in our memory and refer back to it from time to time in the future, or pass it to our posterity.

Tomorrow night (Friday, June 26), she'll perform on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Her latest album is called Far, and it's available in handy MP3 download form at Amazon.com.

I'm a bit of an ultraconservative in some ways. What did people do before central air turned us all into delicate wimps? How did The Greatest Generation cope when temperatures soared above 80?

They flipped on a fan, is what they did. Many of them, in fact, flipped on a Vornado fan that looks almost exactly like mine.

North Beach is an inspiring success story, and the Extreme Volleyball Professionals Tour is its showcase event. For the last two years, the players have voted Racine the best stop on the EVP Tour (see the video at Facebook).

Hoping to learn more about blogging strategies and methods, I recently purchased and read ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income at Amazon.com.

The book, published a little over a year ago, was co-written by Darren Rowse, founder of Problogger.com, and Chris Garrett, a blogging and Internet marketing consultant.

Curmudgeons rejoice! At long last, science suggests that the forced sunniness imposed by religious evangelists, sales motivators, and self-help books from The Power of Positive Thinking to The Secret can actually make you feel worse.

A little Googling reveals that back in May, Henin — known as "Juju" to many of her fans — was the subject of a reality show in her home country of Belgium called Les 12 travaux de Justine Henin — literally "the twelve travails," which some have also translated as "the twelve challenges" or "the twelve works."

Not speaking French, it's tough to make out all of the challenges, but they seem to include soccer, ski instructing, cooking, modeling, and acting in her favorite soap opera Plus belle la vie.

Overnight, I caught the Thursday's episode of The Strand on the BBC World Service on WUWM.

Listen to it, if you have a chance, before it gets replaced next week. Seventeen minutes into the audio file, host Mark Coles talks to Professor Declan Kiberd about James Joyce's Ulysses, sometimes called "the most unread literary masterpiece of all time."

A new Top Chef season premieres tonight at 9:00 Central on Bravo, Channel 70 on Time Warner Cable here in southeastern Wisconsin. However, it's not the regular Top Chef, but instead a spin-off series called Top Chef Masters.

On the positive side, instead of culinary climbers, this series features actual star chefs competing for charity — chefs like Hubert Keller, Michael Chiarello, Roy Yamaguchi, Rick Bayless, John Besh, and many more.

MSNBC morning host and former Florida congressman Joe Scarborough may be the electronic media's most tolerable conservative Republican. He may even have a new book, out just yesterday, urging his party back from radical recklessness to a more moderate temperment (The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise).

None of this, however, means that Joe Scarborough can gracefully handle a little pointed ribbing.

Since we were near Sauk City, Wisconsin the Saturday before last, I thought it might be fun to look for the original Culver's Frozen Custard & ButterBurgers Restaurant opened by George Culver and his family in 1984.

The Colbert Report should be especially good this week, with Stephen Colbert on location in Iraq, a trip whose exact date and destination had been kept secret until Friday, leading many to ask (and search for), "Where and when is Stephen Colbert going to the Persian Gulf?"

His first guest in Baghdad is Gen. Ray Odierno who, under videotaped orders from President Barack Obama, shaves Colbert's head.

I heard this story in the wee hours this morning via ABC's World News Now. Apparently it also aired on yesterday's Good Morning America and World News with Charles Gibson:

Orlando Magic helps mute boy find his voice

Somewhat like the childhood game of Musical Chairs, there's a point in the popularity arc of any cliché when it becomes so tiresome that anyone who continues to use it exposes himself as an insecure poser fabricating fake savvy.

The expression "going forward" reached that point last year, if not the year before that.

Meet the very first camcorder we have ever owned. It's the Flip Ultra HD, which arrived on the market at the end of April. It also comes in white.

So far, after playing with it for a couple of days, I am very happy with this little gizmo. Operating it could not be simpler. You push the big red "easy button" to record, and push it again to stop. Four navigation buttons around it allow you to flip through your recorded clips, with two more buttons for deleting and approving things. That's it. Amy loves the complete lack of technical adjustments.

Eau Claire, Wisconsin's own Bon Iver is featured this month as one of Amazon.com's June 50 Albums for $5 picks.

You can grab the wildly popular For Emma, Forever Ago for just five bucks.