Nashville-area folk: if you haven't already done so, get thee to the downtown library and go see Wishing Chair Productions' fabulous puppet adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream; it runs until mid-October and there will be several additional performances during The Southern Festival of Books (the confirmed authors list currently includes Rosemary Wells, Christopher Hitchens, and Kinky Friedman). The set was inspired by Van Gogh, the puppeteers are phenomenally talented and well-choreographed, and the puppets are awesome -- Oberon and Titania are life-size bunraku-style figures, Puck zips and flies and spins around the entire room, and the Athenians are remarkably expressive in spite of their fixed facial features -- it's stunning how much posture and gesture can convey. There's a terrific cameo by a bear and the kids were shrieking happily at Bottom's braying. (My companion was also hugely amused at a three-year-old's "EWW!" when "Pyramus" and "Thisbe" kissed.)

We actually made a morning of it at the library: before the show, we had breakfast in the library cafe, and after the show, we walked up to the East Reading Room to look at its exhibit of a specially illustrated limited edition of Shakespeare's plays. There's a panel from Eric Gill's rendition of Henry VIII, Frans Masereel's engraving of Caesar's death...

And then we visited the Spirit of Nashville exhibit on the second floor before heading out over to Tea Time Nashville, where the proprietor and I chatted about green teas while my friend browsed the biscuits (I had a cup of Kenyan green tea with breakfast that I hadn't been wild about, in part because what I really wanted was more of the honeydew tea I'd sampled yesterday). Then I returned my friend to her house and continued on to Edgehill Village, where I checked out some of the newish stores there: Queen Bee has letterpressed cards, My Sister's Closet has clothing consignments, and Fat Straw specializes in bubble tea.

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Dichroic, I asked my mom about how to say "telephone" in Mandarin. It's something like "den hwah," which is the equivalent of "electric talk."

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Several friends have recently recommended the webcomic "xkcd" to me, possibly because I have a history of dating people like this and because I share Pet Peeve #114. And I fear my own behavior bears out the graph of cat proximity.