Last Friday in the DB they had a picture from the 50th anniversary celebrations in the caption they used this phrase: “partie carree.”

I didn’t know what it meant so I went to Goo language tools and put it in the French-English translator.

This is what I got:

Translate Text
Original text:
partie carree
French to English
Automatically translated text:
wife-swapping party

Seems a little weird. Clearly that is not what they intended the Goo translation must be a euphemism or something. SO what does partie carree mean?

It’s a snow day in Waterloo. School is cancelled at schools and universities.

Winter weather has come after a mild weather for the first few weeks of the season.

Ian says:

It’s a “snowday� today. The quotes are because the truth is that there was an ice storm, not because their is a lot of snow. This actually sucks for me, since I don’t have classes or TAing on campus today it’s quite meaningless. This might as well have been on a weekend for me.

DB says:

The university is closed for the day because of a winter storm that paralyzed the American midwest with ice over the weekend and came howling into southwestern Ontario overnight.

Following procedure, UW automatically closes when the Waterloo Region District School Board shuts all its schools (not just buses). News of that decision by the school board came a little before 6:00 this morning, and a UW announcement was sent to local radio stations and posted on the main web site.

I think following the school board on weather closures is fine, but it doesn’t always work. In December 2004 there was a storm on a day after classes had ended for Christmas. The university decided to stay open, but some units closed because of the weather anyway. I wasn’t happy to have trudged through the snow to the icefields only to see a sign masking-taoped to the door saying it was closed.