Studio711.com – Ben Martens

My employer has good benefits for women taking maternity leave which isn’t too surprising, but they also have benefits for guys. New dad’s can take up to 12 weeks off within the first 12 months from the birth or adoption! The first four weeks are paid and the rest of the weeks would be unpaid. I’m taking the four weeks off and today is my last day of work. I won’t have to go into work for the entire month of September! It’s a huge blessing and we’re looking forward to taking advantage of it. There are no major plans but we’ll be catching up on projects around the house, having a visit from my parents, and enjoying some small day trips. I’m sure that October 1 will come all too quickly.

On my latest drive through Stevens Pass, I saw a few signs for savetheriver.org. After checking it out, I learned that the Snohomish Public Utility District is attempting to put a dam in the Skykomish River. The dam will supply 30 megawatts (power for roughly 10,000 homes.) The dam itself seems like a neat idea. it can be inflated and deflated as desired to let debris, salmon and water flow past the dam. The dam would only be inflated in the winter when the flow is the highest.

Of course environmental protection groups do not like the idea of adding a dam to the river and they have a pretty good argument. The river is part of the state’s Scenic River System and much of the PUD’s power already comes from hydro dams.

That being said, this design seems like a pretty good compromise design. It provides power and helps decrease the use of fossil fuels for power without having a huge impact on the land. If this isn’t good enough, I wonder how the environmental groups propose that the PUD should move to more renewable energy sources? The comments I read were all just renewable energy in someone ELSE’S back yard.

How much does it cost to have a child at the hospital? We had some wild guesses going into this, but I think we’ve finally received all of the bills related to the birth. Now remember that Elijah’s birth was probably one of the more expensive ways possible, but still, this will at least give you a ballpark idea. All of the doctors and companies involved billed our insurance for $36,224.50. Our insurance said “Ehhh…. no… how about your charge us 52% of that and we’ll call it good?” And then, obviously we didn’t have to pay 19k since our insurance picked up a good chunk of the tab.

How much would you pay to have a healthy wife and child? It was definitely money well spent! We’re very thankful to have such incredible medical care available within walking distance of our home.

A friend and I were recently talking to a third guy about the Golden Steer butcher in Bellevue. I’ve tried a lot of things from them and they are all delicious, but if you’re going there and feel overwhelmed, here are my favorite purchases in no particular order:

• Bacon hamburgers
• Bacon sausage
• Pepperoni stick
• Beef kabobs
• Boneless rib eyes
• Beef hot dogs
• Any of their brats and sausages

I’m getting hungry just thinking about this. Luckily we have a rib eye marinating in the fridge right now!

Tyla and I enjoyed watching the entire season of Treehouse Masters on Animal Planet. The shows all followed a strict formula but it was still fun to see what they came up with for each treehouse. Sidenote: it’s amazing how rude and ill-mannered rich people who want to buy treehouses can be (ie. the wife in the “Backyard Bungalow” episode.)

If you only watch one episode, check out the finale called “Love is in the Air.” Pete builds a treehouse on their own property so he gets to do exactly what he wants and wow, it’s a whopper of a treehouse! What’s even cooler for us is that we saw them building this while we were there. The film crew wasn’t there that day, but they had gotten the metal bridge supports in and were working on the main treehouse building. Pretty cool!

I’m so thankful that we stayed there last summer before this TV show hit. Even then it was nearly impossible to find an opening 6-8 months into the future and now they don’t even offer online booking or prices. You have to email them. I imagine they are flooded with requests!

My Subaru is nearing 100K. Hopefully I’ll get another few cheap years out of it, but then I’ll have a decision to make. I’m really interested in the possibility of getting an all-electric car. My commute is ~12 miles each way which seems easy for almost all the electric cars out there today. There are lots of free charging stations around the area and there are so many Teslas and Nissan Leaf’s around here that you hardly even notice them anymore.

The costs are really coming down and you can make a fairly convincing argument that you’ll finally break even on the cost after the life of the car (though people on either side of the argument will still say that’s either too conservative or too unrealistic.)

There seem to be two design ideas on the market:

1. Most companies spend a lot of money on the battery packs and provide something that will survive many charge/discharge cycles over many years. There are charging stations at many parks and businesses.
2. Tesla is building their own “super charging” stations which give you a half charge in only 20 minutes or you can do a complete automated (ROBOTS!) swap of the battery pack in 90 seconds. Charging is free. Battery packs cost about the same amount as a tank of gas.

Tesla is making cars people really want to drive with good recharging capabilities and everyone else is following an agreed-upon standard. Who’s right?

The more I use SkyDrive, the more I like it. It’s an easy way to share files between computers and devices, and it’s a great way to share files with other people. On top of all that, it’s free. At work we use the professional paid version of SkyDrive and I keep all my work documents out there.

If you’ve been using it or thinking about using it, SkyDrive will soon be disappearing. Sort of. The service will continue and the features will be the same, but the name has to change. A British company called Sky won a trademark case against Microsoft and the result is that the SkyDrive name needs to change.

We don’t yet know what the new name will be, but don’t be alarmed when it changes. It’s still going to be a great service.

Happy Birthday to the incredible mother of my son! I know it’s a little weird to say that and then use a picture of Tyla and Oskar, but I thought she’d enjoy the photo (from just after we met in 2008.) I wonder how long it will be before Elijah is as big as Oskar?

The other day I was wandering through the grocery store looking for some sweetened condensed milk and when I saw the “Carnation” brand, something clicked and I realized there was a big Nestle farm in the town of Carnation, WA. I ride past it on one of my favorite motorcycle loops.

A quick search reveals that the tie between Carnation milk and Carnation, WA is very tight. The original company started a few minutes south of here in Kent, WA but the main farm was built in what is now Carnation, WA. In the early 1900s, the farm was supposed to be a home for contented cows which produced better milk. The farm was located just outside Tolt, WA and the town was renamed Carnation, WA in honor of the company.

In 1985, Nestle acquired the Carnation company. The old farm was later turned into a training center for the company and then in 2008 it became a camp for children with serious and life threatening illnesses.

I’ll never look at that can of Carnation milk the same way again!

Last summer, Tyla and I spent the night in an amazing treehouse. While we were there, one of the owners told us that Animal Planet was filming a new reality show based on their treehouses. We never saw the show appear on TV so we figured it had been cancelled, but it’s on now! The show is called Treehouse Masters and new episodes are Friday nights. Full episodes are available online or on their mobile app.

We’ve only watched a couple episodes, but it seems like the show follows the genius behind the treehouses, Pete Nelson, as he builds treehouses for various families. The show feels like lots of other home improvement type shows, except instead of fluffy pillows and crazy paint jobs, the end result of this show is an incredible treehouse.

If you live in the area and like the show, consider spending a night in one of his creations at Treehouse Point in Fall City. It was pretty hard to book a room last summer so I imagine now it’s quite a bit harder with the show being on TV. Make sure you book well in advance!