Resaons I Dislike Queen Elizabeth II (and Carolyn... when she pouts)

I've been to London 3 times. My mom has a real fascination and I'd say closeted obsession with the British royal family and, in addition, tends toward hyper-planning family vacations. At any rate, every time we've been to London we've had a morning where we make the trek to Buckingham Palace to see the 'changing of the guard' only to find that our chosen day is the day that they decide to do a 'reduced' (i.e. lame) production. Then usually the rest of our time is too scheduled to possibly try another morning.

From what I remember (and I'm assuming I'd remember the shit out of a full-scale changing of the guard) all that happened was a few new soldiers marched out and replaced old ones... no horses, no carriages, no fanfare whatsoever. Damn that Queen Elizabeth II... I bet Queen Elizabeth I would never tried any funny business like days off for the 'changing of the guard'. Maybe the guard just wised up and joined a labor union. At any rate, I was severely underwhelmed by the downsized "off day" changing of the guard and feel a little resentment toward the Queen, London and really the UK in its entirety for withholding this great cultural phenomenon.

While I'm on the subject, here's another little ditty. We went to Paris in March a few years ago and my mom spent 3 weeks prior to the trip telling us how cold and rainy it was going to be. So we all packed accordingly and brought MAYBE 1 tshirt, just in case. Naturally, it was ungodly hot all week. On a particularly unpleasant day we went to the Musee D'Orsay. My sister (who already had her panties in a wad about attending museums on 4 consecutive days) just couldn't pout hard enough and decided to throw a little hissy fit by refusing to stop fanning herself with the map of the museum. As a result we walked up 6 flights of stairs because we didn't know there were escalators... because little miss snooty pants was fanning herself with the map.


Anyway, this is just in case you were curious about our family vacations, they're funny. And I like writing about them so you just might have to read more about them.