Thoughts, daydreams, brainstorms and other fruitless attempts to stay warm during a 24-hour power outage:

• Why do I get the impression that Florida Marlins’ brass aren’t the only people cursing the New York Yankees’ profligate spending in Las Vegas last week?

Even the collective consternation of Boston Red Sox stooges has surpassed a dull roar, as if we’ve forgotten that the Yankees have shelled out more than the combined gross natural product of the former Soviet Union since 2001 and haven’t won a bleedin’ thing.

The skinny on CC Sabathia (use that one, kids, if your English teacher asks you to give an example of an oxymoron) is that he was a .500 pitcher last year until the Cleveland Indians fire-sold him to Milwaukee. Then he made the heaviest hitters in the National League – most of whom had never seen a tubby southpaw throw that hard – look like Jason Varitek trying to swat mosquitoes at the end of a weekend bender.

Until the two games that mattered in the Division Series against Philly, that is.

As for A.J. Burnett, his porcelain arm has withstood the rigors of a full season roughly once in the decade since he hurled at Hadlock Field.

You’ll never find a more passionate, gutsy guy than Burnett in a contract year.

Thankfully, Brian “Here, Take Our” Cashman and the Steinbrenner siblings have ensured that Burnett won’t need to sweat out free agency almost until Obama’s inevitable second term. I don’t want to say this deal stinks for the Pinstripers, but if Burnett wore designer after shave, its name would be Pavano.

Marlins president David Samson publicly apologized for his kneejerk reaction. Good. Such bigotry disparages the good name of whiskey-swilling seafarers everywhere.

• From the Be Careful Whatcha Wish For Department, girls’ hockey is now a sanctioned Maine Principals’ Association high school sport.

The good: It means more media attention. I attended my first game Saturday.

Lewiston, St. Dom’s, Biddeford, Yarmouth and other schools with their own ice and interested players now have the privilege of competing for a true state championship instead of a club trophy. Also, there’s no more danger of a 5-foot-3, 110-pound female getting forechecked by a 6-4, 220 male, which I saw happen one too many times when coed was the only high school option for a young woman.

The bad: Once you’re under the MPA umbrella, you’re bound by by MPA restrictions. All the winter-season game and practice restrictions apply. And if you want to form a cooperative team with a neighboring school, now you need to ask permission.

Those were weighty problems for lacrosse when it became a bonafide sport in the 1990s. Some teams split, others folded, and the sport’s growth stagnated for a year or two before it got back on track. I’m not sure the player pool in girls’ hockey can weather that kind of growing pain. It’s going to take a few years before it becomes ingrained in eighth-grade girls that there’s a reason to keep playing.

The ugly: Lewiston already lost one game from its schedule, at least temporarily, earlier this week when Leavitt reported that it couldn’t skate a complete team that day. The schools are working on rescheduling the game over holiday vacation, but the point was Zamboni-water clear: Some of the sport’s charter programs already are operating on thin ice.

• Football season in New England started on an agonizing note when The Franchise absorbed a questionable hit on his kneecap from a dreadful AFC West team. Why do I have the sinking feeling that this year to forget essentially could end today with a painful loss to an even more pathetic AFC West team?

• Spent one hour of my Friday night holed up in a hotel room watching the NBA on ESPN. Other than being the first time I’ve watched an uninterrupted 60 minutes of regular-season pro basketball since I was, oh, about 12, it was a revelation.

To hear those live-in-the-moment, ESPN gasbags tell it, the Celtics, Cavaliers, Lakers and Rockets are the only four teams that still exist. Terrific. Does that mean we can play out the conference and league finals by mid-January and stop preempting coverage of the Hot Stove Season?

* Economy, schmonomy. Heat and hot water cost me $109, plus applicable taxes, on Friday night. Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao cost me $54.95, plus applicable taxes, last Saturday evening.

What did I learn? That heat and hot water have a lot more left to give than The Golden Boy at this stage of the game.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His e-mail is [email protected].