Saint Patrick's Day in Chicago

This Saint Patrick's Day my wife and I will be visiting her sister in Chicago. We have tickets to the House of Blues to see a great Irish Band called Gaelic Storm. We have been to many of their concerts around our area. They were in my city just last summer. We saw them in Chicago last year during the Saint Patrick's Day weekend at The House of Blues also. The band members include Patrick Murphy the lead vocalist of the band, Steve Twigger, Ryan Lacey, Peter Purvis, and the beautiful Ellery Klein on the Violin. A band called Oval Opus will be the warm up band. I don't know much about them so I can't comment on them. My wife is Irish so we tend to celebrate the day. She won't wear green, she says she is on the orange side of the flag. She is Lutheran (that is Catholic Lite, same sins only half the quilt). I think she has every Gaelic Storm song recorded on her Ipod. She has bought so many T-Shirts from them. I think she paid the fuel price for them coming down from Wisconsin, where they will play the night before their first gig at the House of Blues on Friday the 16th.
We also plan to see the Chicago River turned green. They have been doing that since 1962. They use 40 lbs (18 kilograms) of green vegetable die and dump it in the river. It will keep the river green for several hours. We will also be walking down the mile (Michigan Ave.) Last year we ate at the Cheesecake Factory and I'll tell you they have great food there besides the great Cheese Cake.
We plan on driving to Chicago Friday afternoon after my wife gets out of work. I work 3rd shift so I will be sleeping while she's at work. It is about a 7 hour drive depending how traffic is around the big cities. It's great that we will be driving to a different time zone. The time change won't make it so late when we arrive. I took off on Sunday night so we won't have to rush getting back home. My step-son will be taking care of our pets while we're away. He was suppose to go with us until he got the second job at Tim Horton's. He and his girl friend are buying a house. They say the housing market is going down hill right now but you can't fool me cause my daughter and her boyfriend, my brother-in-law and his wife are also buying houses this spring. I will be doing a lot of moving people this spring!!! Can't wait!