Short photo recap of a long Easter weekend

Britain provides two public holidays for Easter weekend, one for Good Friday and one for Easter Monday. Schools often close for two full weeks around Easter. Besides providing family time, the four-day weekend signals the start of the tourist season, with prices for flights and hotels beginning to rise as summer approaches.

We didn't travel anywhere, but we did enjoy a lovely long weekend. Here's a quick photo recap:

It was new to us, but there's a tradition here of decorating Easter bonnets. Jackson's nursery — he attends two mornings a week — had a little Easter bonnet "parade" a couple days before the long weekend. That meant a craft assignment for mom and dad. Isn't the whole point of sending the kid to nursery that he does this stuff at the nursery, so mom and dad don't have to suffer through it?

Pollock House was built in the 1750s. It is one of many properties operated by the National Trust of Scotland which this weekend hosted an Easter egg hunt, all sponsored by Cadbury.

For the Easter egg hunt, the kids searched for pirates which were hiding letters.

There were eight letters hidden around the country house. In this room, the letter was "hidden" on the left side of the fireplace.

Jackson receives his Cadbury egg after finding all eight letters and unscrambling them (well, mom and dad unscrambled them) to spell a word.

We also celebrated Kate's 38th birthday this weekend. She received gifts like this combination birdhouse and feeder . . .

. . . and this Panasonic Lumix TZ70, a terrific compact camera that can be stored easily in a purse or pocket. We lost our previous compact camera about 18 months ago, so this is a great addition for our explorations.

We celebrated Easter, which in our agnostic household is not much more than hiding and finding eggs.

We also spent a full afternoon on an urban hike in central Glasgow. We passed, among many other things, the People's Palace and Winter Gardens on Glasgow Green.

A mural on Ingram Street, depicting Scotland's four seasons.

Completed in 1626, this Tolbooth Steeple is all that remains of Glasgow's medieval municipal building.

We walked for awhile along the River Clyde.

We swung by the former Templeton Carpet Factory, which at one point was the largest carpet factory in the world. Now it's occupied by other businesses, including a beer brewery.

Had to keep the wee one happy during our excursion.

We finished our urban hike with a stroll up Buchanan Street, the premier shopping drag in Scotland.

At the end of our walk, we stumbled across Five Guys in downtown Glasgow, which was a pleasant surprise for us. Apparently, it opened just as we were headed back to the States for a visit.

Jackson picked up on how excited Kate and I were to find a Five Guys, and decided he'd make some crazy eyes, too.

We also spent time during the weekend watching the Final Four. We had some expat veterinary students over at our house until around 4:00 am on Sunday morning. I almost won our NCAA Tournament bracket pool; tied for first place, but lost the tiebreaker. [Grumble, grumble, grumble]

Since the championship game didn't start until nearly 2:30 am on Tuesday morning, we recorded the game and got up at 6:00 am to watch. My law school alma mater, Duke, won its fifth national championship! (Photo courtesy of News & Observer.)

My favorite day of the year, diminished

Today is my favorite day of the year!

More exciting for me than Christmas, or my birthday, or even Jackson's birthday -- and let me digress, a present for Jackson's birthday arrived today but I have to wait almost three months to give it to him; it's killing me already -- is the first day of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

Pretty much every year for the past two decades, whether in class or at work, I've been able to take off this Thursday afternoon and watch the tournament non-stop from noon 'til midnight. Might be at home, perhaps at a bar, sometimes at a friend's house, occasionally in person, and often a mix of those options. Some years I've hooked up multiple televisions to be able to see several games at once. After a day of gorging on basketball, I follow it with a Friday doing the same thing. And then a Saturday. And a Sunday.

Bracket by ESPN.

One year, I escaped a court hearing on a Thursday afternoon because my opposing counsel had tickets to an NCAA tournament session. Thank goodness. I not only had "no objection" to his motion to continue the hearing to a later date, I offered my "full support." The judge, who had multiple degrees from the University of North Carolina, cheerfully granted the motion.

This year, I'm out of luck. A handful of tournament games are shown on ESPN (broadcasting the CBS coverage), but they generally start around 10:00 pm and go into the middle of the night. Since we're only four hours ahead of the U.S.'s east coast -- we're usually five hours ahead, but the earlier daylight savings time in the States crunches our time difference for a few weeks -- I'm missing all of CBS's afternoon games. Rather than college basketball, ESPN here is showing football (i.e., soccer) from the Bundesliga, or French rugby, or other #%&*! programming instead of U.S. college basketball.

Sniff.

Double sniff.

I may be able to watch some games online, so it's not a total loss. But the NCAA's online service isn't available to those of us overseas. Only a fraction of the tournament's games are available, through secondary sources.

I have an undergraduate degree from Indiana University, and a law degree from Duke University. IU wasn't any good this year, so go Blue Devils!

Moreover, I'm the only person I know in the entire country who actually cares about the NCAA Tournament. Kate will dutifully watch some games, but she'll grow bored or restless. Jackson likes to watch, but his attention span won't last an entire game. And he's not fond of my occasional outburst at officiating. (For Jackson's sake, I hope there aren't any games with Ted Valentine, Karl Hess, or Jamie Luckie.)

Jackson at Cameron Indoor Stadium last spring.

I'll muster what excitement I can. I'll stay up late, record the early morning games, watch online.

But it just won't be the same.

My favorite day of the year. Reduced. Devalued. Diminished.