A wish for Wisconsin

I've just finished my conference paper for next weekend (hurrah!) except for the excruciating part where I brutally cut out great big chunks of brilliant writing because it's too darned long for a 20-minute presentation. But now that it's written I can allow myself to start thinking about the trip to Milwaukee, except just this minute I realized that I haven't heard yet whether my travel grant has been approved. 

Rats. 

I leave on Wednesday. I bought the plane tickets and reserved the room weeks and weeks ago. I applied for travel funding well before the deadline, but the committee just met last week to discuss funding. That's cutting it a little close. If the Powers That Be decided to cut off faculty travel funds this year, I certainly hope someone will tell me before I sink a pile of money into four nights at a conference hotel in downtown Milwaukee.

Milwaukee--virgin land for me. I've been asking people for weeks what I ought to do between conference sessions in Milwaukee and they keep telling me Milwaukee's a wonderful town but no one can tell me why. "Breweries," they say, but I'm not really a beer person. "It's like Chicago only smaller" they say, or "It's like Detroit only with less bankruptcy and more cheese." Right. Just what I need!

I'll probably spend most of my time chopping my paper, reading my paper, hearing other papers, and grading students' papers, but just in case I find a little free time on the schedule, I need some suggestions. So help me out: what can I do for fun in Milwaukee? Aside from hope I get travel funding, that is.