In Your Face, Vision Of My Own Death

My six-month dental check-up was scheduled for last Friday morning, but given that I had meetings all fucking day on Friday, I called in to reschedule it to this morning.
It was at 10:30, so as I thought about that last week I considered how much of a pain it would be to get up, drive to Herndon, be at work for two hours, then drive to Ashburn, then drive back to Herndon for the rest of the day, and I also considered that I needed to get my 5,000 mile maintenance done on my car, and I also considered that I like not being at work, so I decided to just take the day off.
Of course, as a result of my check-up I have to go back on Monday to get two crowns put in - which means, apparently, that I have to live without my bottom plate for a week for some reason, so I'll be doing even less smiling than usual - so I'm going to end up getting up, driving to Herndon, being at work for two hours, then driving up to Ashburn, then going back to Herndon for what remains of the workday anyway.
Oh well.
After finishing at the dentist I picked up my three-month supply of Purilens solution for my contacts from my eye doctor's Ashburn office, then ate lunch and realized that I didn't have enough time to really do anything before my maintenance appointment, but that if I drove straight there I'd be ridiculously early.
Ultimately I decided to just take my time getting there, but still ended up arriving 50 minutes early.
I decided to drive around for a while, mostly in pursuit of some place with a public restroom that could afford more privacy than a standard gas station restroom, and I became keenly aware of something that's been bothering me about Northern Virginia for the nearly seven years that I've lived here: nothing is conveniently located.
The landscape is riddled with industrial buildings, office complexes, and shopping plazas full of things like nail salons, piano repair shops, and pet stores, but actual useful places like grocery stores tend to be few and far between. Even convenience stores are inconveniently located, spread out sparsely across multiple counties.
(I just learned yesterday that some cities have laws dictating that gas stations can't be located too close to eah other, for some given value of "too close.")
I drove off in what I thought was a direction likely to lead to a Giant, or Bloom, or Safeway, but at the end of it found a hardware store, a Subway, and various nail salons, so I turned around and headed off in the opposite direction for several miles before finally finding a Harris Teeter.
Still, even after making use of the facilities, despite all of the driving around, I still arrived at the dealership a little early.
After that I was on my way home when I decided that I should stop at Target, though I didn't really know why.
After all, I just went shopping on Saturday, so Ididn't really need anything. Ultimately I decided that I would pick up Transformers 2 on Blu-ray.
Last winter I caught the sleeve of my leather jacket on something and ended up tearing a big hole in it. I've been thinking about picking up a replacement; something light enough to wear when it's just a little cool out, but sufficient to keep me warm on the trek from the parking garage to my cubicle.
So as I was headed - mostly pointlessly - to Target, I was going past the Outlet Mall, and thought about how there's still a Wilson's Leather actually open there, and one part of my mind decided that I should stop there first.
The other part of my mind, the part that knows that even on a Tuesday afternoon the Outlett Mall is far more crowded than a mostly open-air space out to be, objected.
That part tried to appeal to a third part of my mind to resist the first part, but that was the part that is apathetic and generally says, "Do whatever the hell you want. I don't care."
So as I made the lane change, in accordance with the first part of my mind's wishes, I said, "Really? We're doing this? *Sigh*"
I looked around for a while and found something I kind of liked on the clearance rack, but it didn't fit very well. I was about to give up, but found the same jacket in a slightly larger size, tried it on, and found that it fit well (except for the sleeves, which are always an issue for me; anything that fits my shoulders and the incongruous length of my torso is going to be a bit long in the sleeves) .
It's a pretty nice jacket; soft leather, lightweight, and designed to look rather like a leather sport coat. Not thrilled about the lack of external pockets, - it's got those fake pockets like you'd find on a sport coat - but overall it was the one I liked most , and with the clearance price I saved $250. Well, technically I didn't save that much, as if it had been selling for $400 I wouldn't have actually bothered buying it at all. Still, it was a good deal.
After that I went to Target and found myself wishing that I hadn't done my shopping on Saturday, as shopping at Target on a weekday afternoon would be comparatively pleasant. It made me miss my old work schedule.
When I have to do a bunch of running around like I did today - Leesburg to Ashburn, Ashburn to Chantilly, Chantilly back to Leesburg; for me that's a lot of running around - I spend some amount of time the night before mapping out my route and figuring out what stops I'll be making along the way and how I'm going to move from one point to another.
I was thinking about what method I would take to get to 28 after picking up the Purilens solution and getting lunch at McDonald's, trying to decide if I would take a right, then make a U-turn at the light, of if I would take my chances and just turn left, cutting across three lanes of traffic on a relatively - especially around noon - busy street.
As I thought about that, I imagined myself turning left quickly in a vain effort to beat oncoming traffic and very vividly pictured myself getting hit from both sides.
After picturing that I thought, "I think I may have just had a vision of my own death."
However, in reality, I was completely in the clear when I opted to make the left turn today, and as I did so, I said, "In your face, vision of my own death!"
Anyway, that was my day off, a day that went by altogether too quickly.