August is only 6 months away

It’s official: There really is such a thing as the end-of-football-season blues. That’s the word from psychotherapist Barton Goldsmith of Westlake Village, Calif., whose column on the malady ran in Tuesday’s Star-Advertiser.

There might also be an end-of-baseball season blues, too, but Goldsmith didn’t talk about that — probably because nothing in U.S. sports compares with the buildup to, and grand pageantry of, the NFL’s Super Bowl. When that annual event is over, it leaves football fans with absolutely nothing else to do on game-day weekends (and Mondays and Thursdays) until at least August.

You know, except for maybe going surfing, or hiking, or walking, or planting a garden, or visiting friends or family, or reading, or going to the museum, or fixing stuff around the house, or …

Plumbing fixtures lucrative, really?

Even thieves ought to have standards of common sense. Why steal something like bathroom flush valves, fixtures and pipes when they’re not worth much?

But they did, and now Ilima Intermediate and Campbell High School will have to spend thousands to replace them. Meanwhile, the students will be inconvenienced.

Maybe an alert of some kind would help. Everyone has noticed those placards at convenience stores that try to deter robbers by announcing that the cashier has no more than X amount of cash on hand, with X representing an unappetizingly low amount. Would a sign help here? Something like: "Note: Is it really worth risking arrest for scrap metal priced at 50 cents a pound?"