Snow day!!!! :o)

Well my March break just started with a bang... no school today since right now in Montréal we are having ourselves a nice snow storm (15-25 cm of snow with 40-60km/hr winds). (I'm sure that my lil, sister Jazz is very impressed, well maybe not, since I know how much she just loves winter) I'll be able to sit at my desk at home, with some Gregorian Chant playing on my Ipod (I know it's weird but I find it relaxing. I often play it while driving because of that, and no I'm not a believer, I'm an atheist, I just like the music.) This means that I'll be able to finally get all my corrections done, quietly, with nobody interrupting me every 2 minutes in the teacher's room because they are having a problem with a computer, printer, or program. At school; I'm the local computer geek. It's not part of my job but since I'm such a helpful person (it's good for my karma :0) ) I will usually help out the other teachers. The only down side is that Mrs. BB might have trouble coming back tonight, so I hope that the storm will die down later today.
With an abrupt changing of the subject, Mrs. BB and I finally bought ourselves some new Macbook laptops since our old 12" Powerbooks were 5 years old and starting to show their age. They were still usable but were getting kind of slow. We'll probably use one of them as a server and the other one we'll use while traveling which we do quite a lot of.

Here is some trivia about snow.

• The highest seasonally cumulative precipitation of snow ever measured was at Mount Baker Ski Area, outside of Bellingham, Washington in the United States during the 1998-1999 season. Mount Baker received 1140 in. (29 m or 95 ft.) of snow, thus surpassing the previous record holder, Mount Rainier, Washington, which during the 1971-1972 season received 1122 in. (28.5 m or 93.5 ft) of snow. (Now that's snow. How about shoveling that out of the driveway?)
  
• Snow crystals are crystals that have formed around tiny bits of dirt that have been carried up into the atmosphere by the wind.
• Scientists think that there are really four different shapes of snow crystals. The simplest shape is a long needle shaped like a spike. The other shapes all have six sides. One of them is a long, hollow column that is shaped like a six-sided prism. There are also thin, flat six-sided plates. And lastly there are intricate, six-pointed stars.
• As the snow crystals grow they become heavier and fall towards Earth. If they spin like tops as they fall then they may be perfectly symmetrical when they hit the Earth. But if they fall in a sideways fashion then they end up lopsided.
• Falling snow crystals clump together forming snowflakes. Each snowflake is made up of from 2 to about 200 separate crystals.
• Snow crystals are really soil particles that have been dressed up in ice.
• The shape that a snow crystal will take is dependent upon the temperature at which it was formed.
• What is chionophobia? The fear or dislike of snow. (Jazz must suffer from this ;o) )
• Bright marshmallow-colored snow blinds us with its gleaming white color because it reflects beams of white light. Instead of absorbing light, snow's complex structure prevents the light from shining through its lattice formation.
• Snow can actually be seen in several different colors. Snow can be red if the air during the snow formation contains red dust particles. Snowflakes forming around these tainted dust particles take on a reddish color. Red snow is found in those parts of Europe where the air is filled with dust particles from the red sands of the Sahara desert. In addition, certain types of algae stain snow yellow, purple, orange, green, and red. In fact, some people believe that the red algae that taints snow red actually looks and tastes like watermelon!