At 10:29 a.m., the all-University email went out, making it official ... "Due to icy conditions, Emory University will remain closed today, Friday, January 8, 2010."

The kids--college and otherwise--haven't begun school yet, so they got the day off regardless. For Emory staff, though, Friday meant fun times. (Just as long as you weren't driving anywhere. Icy roads throughout the Atlanta metro area and points north made travel treacherous.)

The snow in Georgia started mid-day on Thursday. Just a few flurries to start with, then some sleet came along before finally turning exclusively to snow around 8:00 p.m. At my house, the snow finally stopped around 11:15 p.m., but not before dumping about a half inch on the ground.

When the morning came, all that snow on the roads turned to ice and rather than risk a weather-related calamity, Emory's administration made the call to shut things down (although Cliff shuttle drivers and Emory Heathcare employees had to report ... if you run across any of them, please offer them a hot chocolate or something, they deserve it).

So, once we knew we didn't need to chip the ice off our car windows, we asked EAA staff to submit snapshots of how they celebrated their snow day. Visit the EAA's Facebook fan page to see what we're talking about.

If you have snow day photos of your own, whether you live in Atlanta, where they are few and far between, or, say, Denver or Boston where you chuckle at our half-inch-of-snow-chaos, send them to aeaadmin@emory.edu and you may just get a slide show of your own.

-- Eric Rangus, director of communications, EAA