Abandoned Places: Loudoun Castle Theme Park

Once billed as "Scotland's Best Family Theme Park," Loudoun Theme Park has been silent for nearly half a decade, many of its attractions sold or removed. The theme park was built behind Loudoun Castle, the interior of which was destroyed by fire in 1941. The chair-o-plane ride, The Plough,

was one of the largest in the world. In 2007, one of the ride operators of The Rat, a roller coaster, went onto the tracks to give the cars a boost. When it started going, rather than let go, he held onto the rear car all the way up to the top of the hill where he finally let go, plunging 80 feet to his death. The park itself became a casualty of the economy in 2010.

All images used Creative Commons License Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 2.0 Generic. All images by Charles Graham [Clyde_REV / Flickr].

As an added bonus, here are some pictures of another jail: Lorton Reformatory.
Located in Lorton, VA, the prison was built due to an investigation into the horrible conditions of prisons in Washington D.C. It closed in 2001 and is now part of the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory Historic District. [All photos used by permission from Opacity.

Blood & Magic

Man, with a title like that, it sounds like I'm about to go off on some dissertation about fantasy and magic within fantasy or, maybe, some new magic system I, personally, have developed for some epic fantasy epic that involves blood or something. Or maybe something with vampires. Sadly, it's nothing so fantastic. Actually, it's just what it says it is...

Blood
I have an ambivalent relationship with blood. I don't mind the sight of it, not at all. If you're gushing blood, I can even stay level-headed enough to help you or get you to help or whatever. I know this from personal experience (like when a friend of mine when I was a kid fell off of a wall and hit his chin on the way down (man, there was blood everywhere!), and I got him to his mom (so she could take him to get the bajillion stitches he needed)). So it was with some surprise that I found out I have a squeamish reaction to people having blood drawn.

I don't have a problem with needles. You need a shot? No problem. Well, unless it's in the belly; that's kind of gross, but it doesn't make me want to pass out (I know, because I had friend in high school with type 1 diabetes who had to give herself insulin shots in the belly. Gross. But no head issues). However, you so much as poke someone with a lancet, and I start to swoon. Not that I've ever actually passed out, but I think I've been close.

I found that out unexpectedly during sixth grade. We were on a field trip to a hospital, and they were going to centrifuge some blood for us, but they needed to get the blood, first, so one of the nurses or techs or someone popped his (or her (I don't remember)) arm out to have the blood drawn. I was trying to watch just like everyone else was, but, as soon as they stuck the needle into the person's arm and started to pull the blood out, I went "white as a sheet," as one of my classmates said, and broke out in a damp sweat, and felt like my head was going to pop off and float away.

To make a long story short, I have learned to avoid situations where I (or anyone else) am going to have blood taken out of me on purpose.

So it was with much trepidation that I had to go in to have my blood drawn last week. Just something for this program at my wife's work, nothing to be alarmed over. [We earn points for doing things like this and can redeem for, among other things, movie tickets. So, now, you know the secret to all of the Oscar movies.] Well, except for me. It was something for me to be alarmed over. Evidently. Because I didn't sleep well the night before (among other side effects). It was, after all, my first time to have my blood drawn.

I also had to have my blood pressure taken. I have had that done before. But it didn't go well. As in, she took my pressure the first time and it was really high. Too high. So she decided to take it again and started telling me to relax and stuff, so I told her it wasn't having my blood pressure taken that was the issue, and I explained the whole thing with taking blood out of people. During the discussion about that and her amazement that I had never had my blood taken before, she finished with the pressure for the second time, and it was even higher, and she was concerned, so she decided to try my other arm. I don't even know what it was that third time, because, by the time she was finished, she had decided to take my blood first. Yeah, yeah, I know she'd already done the pressure three times, but she didn't take any of those results.

She had me lie down and she took my blood. Which was actually okay, because I just stared at the wall the whole time, and, other than a tiny poke, it didn't feel like anything. I was quite shocked actually that she had taken three vials of blood out of me. Three vials! My wife says that's normal.
Anyway...

She took my blood pressure again... and it was totally normal.

Which brings me to my point: I didn't feel any different after she took out my blood than I had beforehand. I mean, to me, I didn't feel any different, but something in me changed, because, immediately after, my blood pressure had returned to normal even though I hadn't felt stressed before and I didn't feel relieved after.
And I find that pretty amazing. Bodies are weird.
And that thing in particular? Well, that's magic.

Which brings me to
Magic
Last week, Nathan Fillion tweeted that he was learning to play Magic: The Gathering, "the game with more rules than game." Or something like that. Here are the things you should take away from that:

1. Yes, I am now on twitter (in case you missed me say that before). You can find me here. If you follow me, I will probably follow you back. Unless I don't know you, in which case you need to give me a reason to follow you, like interacting with me.
2. Yes, I follow Castle. Um, I mean Nathan Fillion. The guy who used to a space cowboy. I only follow cool celebrities, though (seriously, I already quit following one (unnamed) celebrity who turned out to be a <content edited>).
3. Fillion plays Magic! And was even tweeting Wizards of the Coast about some issue or another. He became infinitely cooler when he tweeted about that.

I hope he posts updates, because I really want to know what color(s) he settles on as his favorite.

Oh, also, if you have any twitter tips, let me know, because I'm still trying to figure the whole thing out.

Let's go for a walk... Part 8: The Ruins

It's been a while since we've been on a walk with my dog, so I figure it's about time to do that again, especially since I got sidetracked, last year, by A to Z and never told y'all about the ruins. Actually, I did mention them back in the post about Goblin Town, but I didn't go into too much detail.

This area was first settled by the Russians. They set up here in the early 1800's in order to hunt these guys:

The sea otter. The sea otter has the thickest fur of all other animals, so their pelts are very valuable. You know, more valuable than gold and all of that. [As a total aside, they were hunted to near extinction by 1900, at which point less than 1% of their estimated original population was left, as few as 1000 of them still in the wild (from a population that may have exceeded 300,000 in 1800). No, it wasn't just the Russians that did this, but they were (mostly) responsible for it in this area.]

What the Russians found here, though, was more than just sea otters. They found an area infested with goblins, goblins that also hunted otters but not to the extreme that humans did.

Initially, the Russians set up Fort Ross.

The fort was to defend against goblin attacks. They even joined forces with various Native American tribes to fight against the goblins that were being agitated by the swelling numbers of settlers.

Eventually, the Russian-American Company collaborated to build a stone fortress just down the creek from where I live. It must have been an impressive structure based upon the ruins that are still there. You can see the outline of how big the structure was in the remains of the foundation.

The goblins didn't take kindly to the building of a castle in the midst of their lands, so they mustered their various tribes for a large assault against the humans with the intention of driving them out of their lands. It was a terrible battle. Vicious. Bloody. The creek ran red with the blood of the fallen for weeks.

The humans lost. And the goblins tore down the castle, leaving no stone upon another.

But it came at a tremendous cost to the goblins. The survivors were forced to join together into one tribe just to survive. Retreating to their tunnels,

they have remained hidden through the years as the humans came back and completely overran lands that were once theirs.

However, of late, they have once again been growing bold and can often be seen crawling out of their tunnels at dusk to scavenge for food and other bits and pieces of things they find useful.