I Thimk

I am trying to ensure there will be a third. Most of my efforts not jelling yet.

I am tinkering with the beginning of a story about a young woman getting herself trapped in an abusive marriage.

I always liked Easter. It was a time for kids to enjoy themselves and have fun. A few times we took our kids to community egg hunts. None of them worked out. The kids always left empty-handed. The last time, there was a great field, divided according to age groups. The big kids went first. When they had swept the field marked for them, they simply stepped over the lines and took every egg out there. My kids never got on the field at all. Now that they all are gone, we don't do anything. My wife is planning to take a few decorations to the cemetery for her father. I will be putting an awning over a window on the back porch. But, Happy Easter, anyway.

As it turns out my new story will be science fiction. It's a concept I dreamed up a year or two ago, but set on a back burner. I don't like to repeat myself, so it's a good idea.

More fantasy than science, since I have no expertise in any scientific fields. Plot lines are in flux. I have a foreword and a description of my aliens, at this point. I can confide that they will come in contact with earthlings.

Here's an upvote for thr SciFi/fantasy approach.

Don't worry about being 'accurate' as long as you don't insult the intelligence of general readers. I consider science fiction or fantasy just a way to put humans in unique situations in order to explore their nature and its potential.

All ahead warp 5

I have an outlandish concept for the origin, but one that can be accepted for the sake of a (hopefully) good story.

I hear Walmart using Joe Cocker "I get By With a Little Help From My Friends" on the TV. What ya gonna do?
I got some blocks to support the runners on the wheelchair ramp. Getting committed to actually putting it together. They are not hard to build. This is the fourth one for me. I don't always follow the same design. In fact I put them together as the mood takes me. This one will run twenty feet to a platform, dropping 1" per foot, and come back ten feet. I need it for moving heavy objects in and out.

We have that in common as I used to design/specify the ramps. I don't now remember all the details - close, but no cigar re number of feet and grade, thou the numbers may come back.

My most interesting one was for a landscape I did for (I think it was) the first AIDS house in Los Angeles, or so it seemed. I was asked by an architect pal. That involved ramp design that took ease into consideration.

The architect pal was the lover of an architectural historian who had been part of a project I was the coordinator of. Through him, I got connected to some of the people trying to help folks in trouble in downtown LA. I didn't do much, stuff in my life and work going on, but I did design a landscape for one of those good people, a small house, no charge my lady. But through him I saw more and more.

Later, the architect, with whom I'd worked before a few times, hired me to design landscape for the LA Times building.

I'm interested in your design play.

This is me talking and not sure, but I think max slope would be 8.33.
Don't trust me, it's been a while, and besides, I think you probably are making this stuff less.

I built my first one for a day care in Houston. I don't recall the second. Third was against a mobile home. The guy in the mobile home told me where to end it. I knew he was wrong, but some folks you don't reason with. The result was too steep for his friend to push him up. I lifted the end of it and braced it off the concrete slab, then added more to the length. It sounds almost unworkable, but it was sturdy and served him well. The current project, after I set the blocks, I plan to build the long parts truss style. The deck will be treated deck boards, 1X6 by 3/4 I think they measure. Rails, of course.

I googled a site that prescribed one inch drop per foot.

Sorry for that large blank space - I could not get rid of it.

I looked it up. That is also 8.33

The wood treatment nowdays sucks since they banned arsenic in it. I just helped Girlfriend replace a 3 year old pressure treated walkway deck that was falling through with 1" Cypress planks. Should last until we're both dead.

The appearance of one by four lumber at Lowe's is altered to look like 'treated' but the label plainly states it is not treated at all.

I support the changing of treated lumber, because it is in such wide use that the arsenic had to be creating a public hazard the equal of the hazard from lead in paint. The new treated has to be thoroughly dried and then painted and protected like regular wood.

Arsenic is in the environment naturally. High concentrations can cause health problems but there was virtually no evidence that arsenic from treated wood was causing them. Removing it from children's playground equipment might have been a good idea but the complete banning of it was idiotic and results in billions of dollars in unnecessary termite and wood rot damage every year.

YMMV

People put treated wood everywhere. Here in Texas, everybody practically uses it for fencing; it encircles most everybody's back yard. Eating off of picnic tables made of it. Putting it in gardening timbers. I was calling for a change long before it happened.

YMMV

This kind of thing just confuses me.