Lice Hunt

Fall in my house means a few things - eating more pasta, wearing sweaters and warm socks, washing our hands more, pumping up on Vitamin C and kicking up the lice search.  This is the second time I have been on the lice search, mainly because this is the second year my oldest daughter has been in school but I am more frighten  than last year.  There currently is an outbreak at my daughter's school and I don't think anything scares me more than the possibility of my daughter coming home with lice.  Well except maybe having to pay more taxes, or eating all the Halloween candy before Halloween, or maybe even having food in my teeth in public and no one telling me.
So, yes it's been a few weeks since this whole lice thing started and every day when Grace comes home from school, I quickly search through her head.  I do another scan later on and I am starting to feel like a monkey a bit with all this nit searching (actually if anyone does have a monkey for rent, could I borrow it?).  I honestly I really don't know what I am searching for.  Ok, I know what I am suppose to be looking for, but since I haven't seen them in the flesh before I'm blind to what I should be hunting.  I've only seen lice in pictures where they are magnified by 500 percent.
I have never had lice (knock on wood) but I remember scaring my mom when I was a kid.  I think I was in grade 1 or 2 and it was time for the annual lice check. Our class was called down to the office where some lady searched through our hair. I was pulled out because I believe she saw something in my white hair and so I had to be checked again.  A bug was found, but - but not a lice bug.  Now, I did have baths and I was suppose to wash my hair but come on, I was young and had too much too do than washing my hair all the time.  I had sand to play in, books to look at, crafts to do - not spend my time washing my hair.  Plus, it took forever for my hair to dry.  So that is my only near lice experience and hopefully my last one.
So until this whole thing is over my daughter will have dirty hair in braids unless I can send her to school with a shower cap on - or is that too over the top?