The chatter has died down a bit as folks psychologically prepare themselves for the Memorial Day weekend.

We’ll try to scrape up something that doesn’t involve Mayor Teresa Tomlinson and Richard Hyatt and their dueling e-mails.

Speaking of scraping up something, last week’s vandalism at Columbus High has sparked many conversations about senior pranks from days gone by.

For example, there’s the Fort Benning Ranger who once put roadkill in the attic of his high school on a Friday evening. By Monday morning, the whole school stunk to high heaven.

While it makes for good stories, we’re not condoning vandalism. In fact, the moral of last week’s story is to just say no.

Speaking of Mayor Tomlinson, you can’t look at her proposed city budget and say she’s not trying to save money.

But her plan to cut garbage pickup to once a week was placed on the budget scrap heap last week, and Bull Creek and Oxbow Creek golfers appear to have $300,000 in city general fund money to cover any operational shortfalls.

Now the Civil War navy has declared war. Tomlinson has proposed whittling the $300,000 the city gave to the museum last year down to the $78,000 it received when it opened in 2001.

Saturday, there will be a rally at the Port Columbus Civil War Naval Museum from 10 a.m to noon to show support for the museum.

In the past, the cannons have been fired toward Alabama. Rumor has it they are now aimed at the Government Center.

Speaking of Columbus High School, former WTVM meterologist Kurt Schmitz was spotted several weeks ago working as a substitute teacher.

One student blurted out, “Hey, you used to be the weatherman!”

To which Schmitz replied, “I will always be the weatherman.”

Lots of people have been chattering about Schmitz taking his meteorological skills to another station, as well as further changes in WTVM’s weather staff.

We dispatched a reporter to call Schmitz, who confirmed that he had talked to WRBL about doing some on-air stuff, but he’s still under a non-compete clause.

“It is not going to happen, at least not this year,” said Schmitz, who lost his job a few months ago.

We also called WTVM.

Hey, Lee! You didn’t call us back!

But news director Tom Burke did call to confirm that Derek Kinkade is now the chief meteorologist and Bruce Lee will be leaving the station next week. His final day is Tuesday.

That leaves WTVM with one weatherman and a lot of newscasts. The interim plan, according to Burke, is to use Katherine Kington, a weekend anchor, in a fill-in role. He said the station is working to return to a lineup of three weather people.