So. The Queen herself, with Prince Phillip in tow, is visiting Winnipeg on October 9th. In of itself this information wouldn’t be a reason to mention it, except for the fact that the man himself (no, not the Queen) is planning a visit to the school.

Apparently, and I only know this because I was told this during the instructors’ meeting on the royal visit, he likes architecture. That’s why he’s coming to the new downtown campus where I work: he wants to see how the architects will merge the old, 1900’s stone facade with the new, glass and steel design.

At any rate, this again would be of minor note to me (and possibly to you) except that, just like any royal visit, there will be photo-ops. Apparently the college wants to have instructors with a student or two in all of the small video editing suites on the first floor of the school, so his, er, eminence (?) can “chat them up”.

So I may have a chance, if I really want, to meet the guy. The big problem is I know absolutely nothing about British royalty. I know their names, and I know their scandals, but I feel quite sure that wouldn’t be proper conversation material. At least I know that I wouldn’t want to come thousands of miles to have some snot-nosed Web designer guy remind me that my son once had aspirations to be a tampon.

Tomorrow we have a campus-wide “royal protocol meeting”, where the students and staff get to learn all of the strange and bewildering protocol that we need to follow whilst in the presence of Phil. It should be interesting.

And I’ll let you know what my decision is on whether or not I’m chosen to meet him. Anyone got anything to share that I should know about the guy?