Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Grammar Be Hard

I’m finishing up the editing for blog volumes 2008 and 2009. The technical process is pretty quick because I have a tool that does the following:

  • Connect to the database behind the blog.
  • Pull down each post and figure out which categories it belongs to.
  • Append the post to an HTML file.
  • Load the single HTML file for the whole year into Word.
  • Apply a custom style to do 90% of the formatting.
  • Do a similar process for the moblog pictures and Twitter posts.

From there, it’s a lot of manual steps:

  • Convert all the pictures to grayscale (done with a macro I wrote)
  • Make sure pictures are the right size. Sometimes this means making the page-wide images just a bit smaller to fit more than one on a page.
  • All hyperlinks get a footnote on the page listing out the URL, but sometimes I’ll print the full URL as the text for the hyperlink in the post. I go through and manually remove the footnotes in those situations.
  • Check page breaks and reformat where possible to give a better layout.
  • Spelling and grammar check.

I debated for quite a while about the spelling and grammar check. This isn’t meant to be a literary work but rather a view of my life as I saw it at that time, and if I wrote with errors, shouldn’t I include them? I decided to fix everything except the Twitter updates. I hate seeing all those mistakes and seeing them in print is even worse. It’s amazing how many errors you guys let slide without making fun of me. Thank you.

Most of the time, the errors are just typos, but I do make on grammatical error fairly often: “more ____” vs adding “-er.” For example, which is correct: “riskier” or “more risky”? There are many pages on the web to cover this topic, but I have yet to find a quick answer. Maybe there isn’t one. Or maybe you teachers can help me out. For now, I take solace in the fact that many mistakes I thought I was making turn out to be correct after all.

I’m still very happy with lulu.com for publishing. 2008 is going to be about 700 pages long and it will cost me less than $30 to get a hardcover printed copy of it. I find that amazing!

benmartens February 4, 2010 Projects

Chili

I love chili, and when I make chili, I generally say the spicier the better. I made it last week and I think I finally made it too spicy even for me. I won’t go into details. You should just be thankful you don’t live with me. Here is the basic recipe I use and I’ll point out where you can adjust the heat.

Ingredients

  • 2  tsp  Each – Salt, Pepper
  • 2  tbsp  Each – Chili Powder , Sugar
  • 1  lb(s)  Lean Ground Beef or Turkey
  • 1  can(s)  Tomato Soup, 10 3/4 oz
  • 3  can(s)  Red kidney beans (Undrained) 15 oz cans. I’ve also used “chili beans.”
  • 2  can(s)  Stewed Tomatoes, Italian/Mexican style, 14 1/2oz
  • Cheddar cheese and sour cream to top the chili when you serve it

Brown ground beef, drain, put in 4 quart pot. Add all other ingredients. I drain off a bit of the juice in the beans but leave most of it. Adjust spices to your liking. Sugar reduces the acidity of tomatoes. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring constantly! Once boiling, reduce heat to simmer, and cover pot. Simmer for 2 hours, stirring every 15 minutes to prevent burning on bottom. After 2 hours, remove cover and continue to simmer until desired thickness.

Tips:

  • This works better on the stove than in the crock pot. Don’t forget to stir every 15 minutes though. It will burn if you don’t.
  • Taste it about an hour in and see how the spices are doing. Add sugar if it’s too spicy and add pepper and chili powder if it’s not hot enough.
  • If you know you like it hot, chop a jalapeno and throw it in at the beginning. I used two jalapenos last time and that was too much for me.
  • I put the stewed tomatoes through a food processor before I start to get them chopped up into smaller pieces. I don’t like big chunks of tomato in the finished product.

I’ve tried a lot of chilis over the years and this is my favorite. I don’t make it very often because it takes a lot of attention, but when I do, I like to eat leftovers on the bed of rice.

Tyla isn’t a big fan of beans so I’m going to start experimenting with beanless chili. If you have a favorite recipe, please let me know! Apparently the chili gurus in Texas consider beans in chili to be blasphemy so I’m sure there are plenty of good beanless recipes around.

benmartens January 5, 2010 Food

Fireplace Shelves

I’ve had the last 1.5 weeks off from work, and other than a three day trip for Christmas, I spent most of it at home. My project over the break was some new shelves to go above the fireplace. I was no longer happy with the look of the old ones, and with Tyla living here starting in April, I wanted something more versatile.

The project, of course, required about four trips to Home Depot, but all in all, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. It’s a basic box design with a divider down the middle. The shelves are held up with adjustable pegs and there is molding around the edge of the box to make it look like the shelves are really built in. The end result looks nice, but when I look at it, I see a bunch of mistakes. I debated whether or not I should share them with you, but why not? By this point you know I have nothing to hide. Plus, it’s a good reminder for the next time I do a similar project.

  • I used plywood and then faced it with solid wood trim. I faced everything on the front side of the shelves, even the edges that are covered up with the molding. That last part turned out to be a mistake. I thought it would be simpler, but putting molding on top of the facing on top of the plywood wasn’t the best choice.
  • Trying to make a picture frame effect out of molding is TOUGH.
  • I forgot to glue some of the pieces. They are only held in with nails.
  • I used 1/2” plywood. Putting 1.5” finishing nails into plywood that thin was difficult for me. Too many times the end of the nail would pop out the side of the plywood. I know that’s a lack of skill on my part, but maybe I can use it as an excuse to buy a compressor and nail gun.
  • If I was doing it again, I wouldn’t put the divider down the middle. It meant twice as many peg holes and there are one or two holes that are off by a fraction of an inch. The end result is that the shelves on each side of the divider don’t always line up perfectly.
  • For some reason, the polyurethane on the back wall of the shelves never dried completely. It’s still a tiny bit tacky as I write this. I only put one coat on because I was afraid if I sanded the rest, I’d get dust drying into the back wall.
  • I missed some spots of glue when I was wiping it off. When you stain, those areas don’t take the stain as well and it really shows up.

I could probably continue, but you get the idea. As I sit across the room looking at the shelves, I really can’t see any of these problems so I’m still happy that I built them. I look forward to doing more projects like this and shortening my list of mistakes.

benmartens January 4, 2010 Projects

2009 Year In Review

I prepared to write this post by looking back through the photos I’ve taken and reading last year’s Year in Review post. The mere fact that Tyla appears prominently in it should have been a big clue to anyone who has followed my blog that this was something pretty serious. I finished with “What lies ahead? I’ve never been more excited to find out!” Now I know the answer to that, so let’s start from the beginning.

The year started off with a bang as we celebrated the marriage of Tim and Chelsea. The wedding was a blast and the happy couple has just moved into their first house! That wasn’t our only wedding of the year though. In March, Tyla and I took our first big trip together out to beautiful Syracuse, NY for Andy and Lauren’s wedding where I participated in, and won, my first dance off.

Andy, Jay, Mike and I had planned a big ski trip to Big Sky, MT, but that took a very sad turn. I woke up in Spokane on the morning I was supposed to pick everyone up at the airport in Missoula to find out that Mr. A had passed away. It hit everyone hard. Andy and Jay cancelled their plans, but Mike and I went on with the trip. While the trip did not turn out exactly as we hoped Mike and I made the best of it and saw some amazing sights. I hope that the four of us can meet up again soon for another trip.

While I was in Big Sky, I got a tearful call from Tyla letting me know that she had been laid off from her job as a gymnastics teacher. It was a complete shock to her, and given the job market at the time, the future looked rough. It took over a month of hard work and countless emails, phone calls, and interviews to break through the mass of applicants and land a new job. I told her that when it was all done, I knew I would be impressed with the way she handled the situation, and that came true. When unemployment doesn’t even cover your rent, it’s more than a little scary but she showed a ton of determination and got through it.

Early in the year, I bought a new vehicle: a 2009 Kawasaki Concours 14 ABS. After four years of riding, it was time to upgrade to a bigger bike, and what an upgrade this one is! In a normal year, I average 2000 miles of riding. I already have over 5000 miles on this new bike from trips to Bremerton, the Tulip Festival, the Cascade Loop, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker, and many others. Tyla was sitting right behind me for many of those miles and it’s a blast being able to share one of my hobbies with her!

Speaking of sharing hobbies, Tyla and I went skiing twice together. She had skied a few times before in Minnesota but still labeled herself as a beginner. I was impressed with her first day on the slopes at Snoqualmie and even more so when we headed up to Crystal. I hope that once we get married we can get her a full set of gear and go even more often.

This was also the year of concerts. We saw the Lion King, Wicked, Little Big Town, Kenny Chesney, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Montgomery Gentry, and Sugarland. I think the Lion King was my favorite of that whole list. If you get a chance to see it, don’t pass it up!

In June, Tyla and I flew back to Indiana for a quick three day weekend. In addition to giving her more time to talk to my family, it was great to show her where I grew up. Tyla and David became best friends, Tyla got to play with frogs, we swam in the pool, and we even got out in the canoe on the lake for a while.

My exploration of Washington continued with camping trips to Lake Easton State Park and Moran State Park. I think it will be the last time I visit Lake Easton. While it’s a nice mountain park close to home, it’s also VERY close to the interstate which ruins the feel of camping. But those aren’t the only local trips I took. When Mom and Dad came to visit over Labor Day, Tyla and I took them on a tour of the Olympic Peninsula. We visited Hurricane Ridge, the Hoh Rainforest, and Ocean Shores.

Tyla and I had agreed early on that we wouldn’t even talk about the possibility of marriage until after we had been dating for a year. After that milestone was passed in late July and after I had chatted with both of our parents, I didn’t waste much time getting her into jewelry stores to figure out what she liked. And though she didn’t know it at the time, I kicked off my birthday weekend by purchasing the perfect ring for her. I ended up waiting almost a full month to give it to her. Finally it was time to pop the question, so Tim, Chelsea, Tyla and I headed up to Whistler for a weekend in October. You can reread the proposal story if you want, but the short version is that she made my lifelong dreams come true by saying yes. We quickly switched gears into wedding planning mode. That’s still in progress, but it’s coming along nicely.

If I thought waiting for a month to give her the ring was hard, waiting another 6 months to actually marry her is even harder! I can’t wait to start the rest of my life with her. There is no doubt that God meant for the two of us to be together for the rest of our lives. I’m proud to call her my fiancée, and I know she’ll make a fantastic wife and (God-willing) mother.

As we entered December, cancer’s lightning blow struck closer to me than ever before as Mom was diagnosed with kidney cancer. While the surgery changed our Christmases a bit, so far it appears to have done the trick. She’s on the road to recovery and we’ll find out how successful the surgery was in a few months when they run more tests.

So while there were some bumps along the road, as I look back on the year, I see a long list of memories with Tyla. Last year I finished with “What lies ahead?” When I wrote that, I knew what I hoped would happen and my silent wishes did come true. In just a few more months, there will be another Mrs. Martens in this world.

Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008

benmartens December 31, 2009 Commentary

Cookies!

A few weeks ago, I did something I’ve never done before: make cookies. I feel pretty confident with cooking, but baking is the wild west as far as I’m concerned. The first recipe was one I spotted on Facebook in an exchange between the Abendroth cookie experts. The second is my favorite cookie that my mom makes. (Turns out they are from the back of the white chocolate chips bag. Ha!) I tried a third cookie this weekend but it didn’t turn out real well so I’ll have to give it another shot before it hits the blog. Enjoy!

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 egg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.

Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely. [source]

  

Ingredients

  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2/3 cup Nestle Toll House Baking Cocoa
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 cups (12-oz pkg) Nestle Toll House Premier White Morsels

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels. Drop by well-rounded teaspoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until centers are set. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool completely.

benmartens November 27, 2009 Food

Crystal Mountain Opening Day

I sent a vacation email to the team at work, dug the gear out of storage, packed the rock skis in the car, and headed down to Crystal Mountain this morning for Opening Day 2009.  Never having been to an opening day, I didn’t know what to expect.

On the drive down, I realized that a lot of schools had the day off. Sure enough, the hill was packed with a decidedly non-standard Crystal crowd. In fact, by the time I left, the lots showed evidence of being extremely full, all the way down through D lot.

With a crowd that big, the Chinook Express and Forrest Queen were very crowded. But hey, those were the only lifts that were open (aside from the bunny hill) and who am I to complain about skiing in early November for half price?

By noon, there were tracks starting to appear in Campbell Basin. The people putting in the effort for fresh tracks were being rewarded with two to three feet of good quality snow. That being said, anything off the groomed runs usually resulted in scraping a rock or three. If you have rock skis, use them.

While taking a break at the upper lodge around 12:50, I heard a rumor that REX was going to open at 1 despite the “we’re not opening this today” sign. I skied down and joined the small group that had gathered in front of the lift. We waited for about 50 minutes before finally getting on the lift. Towards the end, I admit thinking it wasn’t worth the wait, but boy was I wrong! I was probably about the 10th chair up and I didn’t waste any time bombing down into Green Valley.

Incredible.

That one run alone was worth the $30 lift ticket. Top to bottom untracked powder. I jumped onto a chair and watched it get tracked out as I rode up. On the second run, I did a little bit of hiking and got another huge run of fresh snow. By that point, the football field sized plots of untouched snow had pretty much disappeared, but I was in awe of the fantastic November skiing.

But yes, it is early season. You WILL hit rocks. Don’t take those brand new $700 skis with you, but do find a way to get out there! Ski season in Washington has arrived!

You can find photos in the photo gallery. They all have the title “Opening Day.” Also note that the text up to this point is a duplicate off a post I made for the SeattlePI website. I’ll keep a lot of the skiing stuff there, but I’ll still continue to cross post a few of my favorites.

One of my favorite parts of skiing is the people you meet on the lifts. For example, my first ride up was with a guy who said he hadn’t skied in 10 years. Another guy said, “Have you been locked in a closet?” “Close. A cell.” Turns out he got out of jail about a month ago. By the end of the lift ride, the ex-con had a potential job offer from another person on the lift. The second ride up was with two wives who had ditched their husbands to come skiing and were making fun of their guys for going to work instead of skiing.

There was a lot of discussion among the skiers at work about whether or not Crystal would be worth it since they only had 2-3 feet of snow which is barely enough to cover the rocks. I laughed all day as I thought of them sitting at work, especially as snow was blowing up into my chest on those runs down Green Valley. Seriously, when have you ever been skiing and though, “Ehh I should have been working today”? And as for the chest high snow (and I already twittered this): When you’re a 6’4" skier, it’s hard to get face shots, but the more accurate "nipple shots" doesn’t sound right.

One other thing I left out of the Seattle PI is that I saw my first real fight on the mountain. As we were hanging out around the bottom of REX hoping that they would open it, there was a lot of shuffling and jockying for positions in the line/blob. One guy was definitely mad (and I think he was drunk) but he was running through a wide assortment of foul language directed at the four teenage girls who had somehow camped in the front of the line. Eventually his berating moved onto someone else and he ended up throwing a punch. The crowd quickly subdued him and ski patrol jumped into action and escorted him away. I know we joke about “no friends on a powder day” but come on, it’s not like one spot in line is going to spoil your 100s of options from the top of that lift.

All in all, this was an interesting day. It started off as a groomer-cruiser which helped me get back into gear and also because the off-piste snow was sketchy. It ended with three runs that I will remember for a very long time. It’s probably the second or third best runs I’ve ever had. (Other’s in that category are the day at Crystal with Jay and Andy when we had the ski photographer and also the runs that Mike and I made off the top of Lone Peak.)

benmartens November 12, 2009 Skiing

Peanut Butter Noodles

It’s been a while since we’ve had a “Cooking with Tyla and Ben” post. This one is mostly Tyla’s brainchild. She had a hankerin’ for some peanut butter noodles. The only change we made from the allrecipes.com script was the addition of a chicken breast because who eats food without meat? That’s crazy talk.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup chicken broth
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger root
  • 3 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 3 tablespoons peanut butter
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons honey
  • 2 teaspoons hot chile paste (optional)
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 8 ounces Udon noodles
  • 1/4 cup chopped green onions
  • 1/4 cup chopped peanuts
  • 1 chicken breast

Cook the chicken breast in a pan. Optionally, add spices.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add noodles and cook until tender according to package directions. Drain.

Meanwhile, combine chicken broth, ginger, soy sauce, peanut butter, honey, chili paste, and garlic in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat until peanut butter melts and is heated through. Add noodles and chicken and toss to coat. Garnish with green onions and peanuts.

Check the timing on the noodles. It took us a while to boil water and then another 12-14 minutes for the noodles so the chicken was done way too early. However, since everything is combined and heated together at the end, it’s not a big deal.

benmartens October 6, 2009 Food

Olympic Peninsula

Mom and Dad came out for Labor Day and we took a trip with Tyla around the Olympic Peninsula. On Day 1, we started with the Edmunds-Kingston ferry. We weren’t actually sure if we should even begin the trip due to the wet weather and the even wetter forecast. The ferry crossing was dry but incredibly windy. We made our way up to the top of Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. It wasn’t raining there either and the clouds were loose enough to give us some good views. Not knowing much other than the fact that it was a little dirt road, I decided to drive the family out to Obstruction Point. What a drive it turned out to be! Do NOT drive this road if you have an RV or even a large truck. There are many points where it is really a one lane road with hill on the left and cliff on the right. The road was in pretty good shape and we made the 9 mile drive in about 20-30 minutes. Once at the end, we did a little hiking and then made the trek back. The highlight for Tyla was definitely the marmots. We drove back to Port Angeles and spent the night there (after I dropped my camera in the sand and broke it.)

On Sunday we drove from Port Angeles to the Hoh Rain Forrest on the west side of the park. It was raining. Shocker. They get 140” of rain a year with another 30” of mist. We took the ranger led hike, learned a bit, and got soaked despite our ponchos. We continued on to Ocean Shores where, once again, it was not raining and we enjoyed the beach for a while. The beach there is an official state highway so I took the Subie out there for a while.

Sunday morning we headed to the jetty on the south end of the island and then made the long drive home.

I think we made a great move going in spite of the rain. It sounded like it poured all weekend in Seattle and, although it was cloudy, we didn’t get much rain on our trip. There are a lot more things I want to see over there, but this definitely crossed a few items off my list!

Photos are in the photo gallery under Olympic Peninsula.

benmartens September 15, 2009 Outdoors, Travel

Garage Shelves: Part Deux

Ever since I did the first set of garage shelves, I’ve wanted to extend them. Tim came over and we were able to do just that.

We tripled the previous surface area and even added a ladder to make it a bit easier to get up there. The end result is enormous, but it really provides a lot of storage area for my little condo. I had a couple neighbors jealously look on and ask if I’d come do the same in their garage.

Thanks for the help Tim! I’d probably still be making trips to Home Depot for replacement pieces of wood if you weren’t there to help.

It’s a bit difficult to photograph the shelves, but this should give you an idea. There is about 90 square feet of space on top. I had to put a lot of stuff on the floor while I was building the new shelves and I clearly have cleanup work remaining.

benmartens September 14, 2009 Projects, Woodworking