trip planning; wrestling tournament

I still have that lingering headache. Steven also has it. Dan has it ,too. It has to be either a shared cold, allergies, or perhaps the fact that another storm system is coming in tomorrow, with thunderstorms.

Steven and Dan went down to Ohio today and Steven wrestled in a big tournament down near Toledo. He came in third - and the two kids who finished in front of him are also (like him) kids who have placed in national championships. A fourth kid, whom Steven pinned, is a medalist in the Ohio state middle school championships. So this was a tournament with superb athletes, and he did very well to place.

Dan and I have spent the last five or so hours trying to do some trip planning on the Internet. So many things we had wanted to do on this trip are just not looking possible. We had wanted to go to a play at the American Players Theater in Wisconsin, but their season will not really be going yet (they will only be having one performance, and that is a preview, and it is not Shakespeare). We might still head to Spring Green to see the Frank Lloyd Wright estate. Some of the tours made us gasp at the cost, but there is one of a school building he designed that is more affordable, at only $16/person. We are still looking for a hotel with a good water park in the Wisconsin Dells to make reservations for the Wisconsin leg of the trip.

For the Chicago portion of the trip, we found a Best Western by Grant Park that had a vacancy, and while expensive, wasn't too bad in comparison to some of the other hotels in the downtown area. We got tickets to a White Sox game and to the King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum. But the kids wanted to see the Cubbies, not the Sox, and those games were all sold out. We checked some scalper sites, and the mark up was beyond greedy and into the ridiculous. We checked out the offerings at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and one play being performed that month will be a Greek tragedy that I'm not very interested in, and the Shakespeare was an offering of two of the history plays offered back to back, which lasts over 5.5 hours, which would be a long long time for out butts to be in a seat. And they were charging an arm and leg for that, too. They were charging nearly $100/ticket, and that's an awful lot for four people! And there is no way I would leave my kids by themselves for that long in a big city! (Well, I would not leave them alone at all, but you get the idea).

So while I am happy to see the Sox and King Tut, I am also a bit frustrated. Neither of the theaters which offer Shakespeare is offering anything that we could both (either?) attend or afford. And how Wrigley Field is sold out for every game, but hundreds of tickets being available through scalpers for every game is beyond frustrating.

Maybe if we find a bit of time I can finally get to the Art Institute of Chicago this trip. I noticed on their web site that they will be offering a special exhibit of pueblo pottery from the Southwest in June. I would be extremely interested in seeing that...