Brian Howe

Clifton Park is starting to be a legit place to get some great food…I am loving all of the new restaurants, cafe’s and stores that are popping up! Here are some of the new one’s I am excited about!

Shane’s Rib Shack - For us Northerners this is sweet because we don’t have anything that resembles anything close to good ol’ Souther BBQ.

Five Guys - Burgers and Fries at their finest…seriously, i went there with Buddy a couple of months ago in NJ and it is unreal. My prayers have been answered with this place however now I have to add an extra day or two a week to my gym schedule. Worth it.

Moe’s - Welcome to Moe’s…enough said.

However the best thing coming to Clifton Park is coming this weekend!! Northway Church - Malta is movin in with our peeps in CP…I can’t wait to be a part of this quasi-reunion!!

So today I laid on a doctor’s office table and got this warm gel put on my stomach and then a nurse moved a device around my stomach…they didn’t find a baby. They did take some pics of my liver which seemed fairly interesting and I will hopefully get some positive results back that say my enzymes were just having a bad day when I had blood work done a couple weeks ago. I actually went to the doctor last week for the first time in 10 years…hence a bunch of tests and other doctor’s I have to go and visit. I will write more about that experience next week. I have a new appreciation for the stuff my wife has had to go through over the past couple of months, I’m just glad that there wasn’t a kid in there. 

I love Seth Godin’s Blog…seriously I have a problem. I am addicted to it. His quirky humor and visionary anecdotes about marketing and sales keep me coming back for more. I came across a post that I thought was definitely worth your read. The post is called “The Power of Remarkable” and you can check it out here. 

After reading the post, what is so remarkable about your company, church, or life that keep people coming back for more? Do socks really have to match? What do you think?

Last night after hitting the gym for a crazy shoulder work out and then painting a wall at our CP location (shout out to all the people making CP into a sweet looking place where people kind find God) I headed over to Buddy’s house to join a bunch of the guys from our staff to partake in our annual NBA Finals viewing. Buddy up’d the event this year by adding different Basketball events at the end of each quarter and at halftime complete with Gift Cards for the winners. Now, Buddy always claims to be undefeated at Horse on his homecourt…well let’s just say I have a Best Buy gift card that states otherwise. Yeah Baby.

I remember 5 years ago when I was talking with Buddy about joining the Northway team, I remember him specifically saying that Basketball skills were one of the requirements to be on the team…Ummm we must not be stating that in our interview process anymore because as much as I love the guys on our staff, we might have the worst collection of hoop players on any staff in America…well maybe not the worst but definitely the most humorous. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard. 

The Celtics looked unreal last night and I am excited for them…it was cool to see Paul Pierce win a title after sticking with the same team for all the years he has…Ray Allen is a classy dude and Garnett well he had the most interesting interview after a finals victory ever…all I could understand was something about his mom and someone named Peanut.

Tonight I am hitting up Yankee Stadium…I don’t like that Yanks, in fact I love the Sox which means that even if I wanted to like the Yanks I couldn’t. I did however want to see a game in Yankee Stadium before they tear it down and open their new park next year. 

Last night myself, a bunch of our staff and about 60 volunteers did a lot of work on our new property to get it ready for the Celebration Sunday cookout and baptism bash…something happened last night that I didn’t expect to happen. We had FUN…I love the people of Northway, they work hard and play hard. People were raking, picking up trash…I spent most of the night lugging giant pine tree branches across the fields to where the they were put to death in a giant chipper…dude those things are scary. 

I learned a bunch of things last night, free bottled water as a motivation tool goes a long way…if people are working hard towards a vision. People understood why they were there last night, it was just another step on the journey towards creating a place where people who are far from God can find Him. There was no complaining about how hard the work was or that they wished there were more people to do the work…just people laughing, working hard and sweating (some a little more then others).