I saw the most amazing thing today. I had the day off and I took J. to his Tae Kwon Do class today. He's been going for about six weeks and this is the first time I've been to see him. He got his first black stripe on his belt today and that means that they let the kids break boards. So I buy a "board card" and Jeremy goes back in to try breaking the board while I watch through the window. He goes up and puts his hand through it on the first shot! I was literally standing there with my mouth hanging open.

After this amazing exhibition, I made my way to the FleetCenter (or is that the Bank of America Center?) to see the Celtics play the Minnesota Timberwolves. The main attraction of the game was seeing one of my favorite players from the great Celtics teams of the '80's, Cedric Maxwell, have his number retired by the team. The ceremony was very nicely done. 86-year-old Red Auerbach, proving he hasn't mellowed much at all, started talking about how the owners of the Celtics had given Max all these gifts, and that all the other guys there who had their numbers retired must have been thinking that Max wasn't that good - why was he getting all these gifts? It was funny, and you could tell that Red meant it to be funny, but it seemed a little rough. Max said all the right things and gave a nice speech. Several members of the '84 Celtics were there, including Kevin McHale, K.C. Jones, Danny Ainge (who got a serious round of boos) and M.L. Carr.

The game itself was entirely forgettable, with the Celtics getting blown out by the T-Wolves by 19 points. We left with about six minutes left in the game with the Celtics down 21. No doubt the big trade of Tony Battie, Eric Williams and Kedrick Brown to the Cavaliers for Ricky Davis, Chris Mihm, Michael Stewart and a draft pick left the team less than ready for the game. Except for a good period in the second quarter, the Celtics really mailed it in tonight.