You, the honest, working public, are consumed by fiendish glee when someone in my oft-ignoble profession is shamed into feasting upon his words.

So allow me to play the role of Emeril and warm up the skillet. Hey, I'll even set the table.

Seventeen days ago, this publication carried a column adorned by that same slightly smirking, nearsighted face. In it, yours truly proclaimed that the state basketball tournament was the only redeeming quality of unholy Maine winter, and the only tie that dissuaded me from chucking it all away to become a greeter at a Wal-Mart in Hollywood, Fla. Or something like that.

Well, I lied.

Seriously, I'm done. This is it. I'm loading up the car, driving south with no visible means of support and closing on a condo whose rent I won't be able to afford in two weeks. From what they tell me on the nightly news, everyone else in America is doing it.

OK, I will wait until after the state hoop championships. Which, if you didn't get the memo and were seeking the results this morning, have now been splintered across the calendar in school-night anticlimax on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Hockey's slate has been scrunched and squished beyond all recognition, too.

Look elsewhere in this section to find out where to go, and when. I've lost both the patience and fighting spirit that would compel me to list those times here. Frankly, I'll have to look at my e-mail three times Monday in my obsessive-compulsive desire to verify the revised schedule and not to end up in the wrong city.

It is impossible for me to overstate how much Saturday's 58th plowable snowstorm of the winter reeks for the athletes on every affected basketball and hockey team, their families, their friends, their fans, and yes, the media assigned to cover them.

There is such a carnival/festival/family reunion feeling in Augusta, Bangor and Portland during school vacation week. Most of us who center that nine days of our lives around tournament basketball skate through it on autopilot. Two or three days' recovery time is sufficient, and then we we're ready for a Championship Saturday that feels like it'll never arrive.

And then it doesn't.

Please don't blame the MPA. As is the case when weather affects outdoor sports championships in autumn and spring (and that seems the rule rather than the exception in recent years), the sanctioning body does the best it can to scoop up the poultry, um, parts, and make salad.

Postponing the proceedings an entire week wouldn't be fair to teams that already are stir-crazy from not playing a real game in 168 hours.

School nights aren't the ideal scenario, but really, the rest of the season is played primarily on weeknights in December and January without anyone getting hurt. The games should end by 9:45, give or take.

It will cut the crowd drastically. Potentially in half, thanks to casual fans electing to stay home and watch on TV now. That stinks for the principals, who lose the revenue, but it stinks even more for other principals, as in the kids who play in a starring role in these games. This was their chance to shine in an atmosphere that comes only once a year. Thanks to the dastardly Winter Warlock, you can consider this a leap year.

But nobody's getting flogged by the fickle finger of fate more vigorously than the Class A regional hockey semifinalists.

East and West were scheduled to play their semis in separate sessions Saturday at Androscoggin Bank Colisee, with the regional title tilts Wednesday at Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland.

Ice time and available dates being the premium they are, the MPA apparently was left with one solution: Four consecutive games Monday at 3, 5, 7 and 9 p.m. in Lewiston.

Uh huh. If, and I do mean if, all four games end in regulation, with five combined goals and five combined penalties or fewer in each game, with sufficient time allotted for Zamboni resurfacings and other unforeseen interruptions, the last game might, MIGHT, start by 10 o'clock.

Now imagine that just one of the games mirrors the five-overtime, 2006 Eastern final between Lewiston and Brunswick. It would be an unmitigated disaster.

Once again, I humbly suggest a compromise first broached in this space two years ago, and ask the MPA to consider a partial lift of its ban on Sunday playoff make-up games.

Sunday absolutely should be a day of worship and family activities. I'm on the old-fashioned, Bible-thumping side of that argument. But I also believe it's a reasonable solution to play a hockey doubleheader at 6 and 8 p.m., after sundown, after services, after the dinner table, after the chores are done.

This should be used only in an emergency. Basketball's situation was not an emergency. There was more wiggle room in that schedule. Hockey has no such liberties.

Get back to me Tuesday when one team's players get only two hours sleep the day before a big exam, or on the eve of a potential appearance in the regional final, and tell me it wasn't an emergency.

Having seen the secular shift in our society, I won't be surprised if Maine goes in that direction in a year or two. And being an arch-conservative on most other issues, I'll probably live to regret suggesting it.

But that's fine. I won't be around to see the fallout. My beach awaits.

And you think I'm kidding.