Miles thought we should run the Dance Off today with a rolling joke about Vic’s big appointment this morning down at Fair Oaks.

He had cataract surgery six months ago, and this was the follow-up. The Creative Section sent a small delegation along, since they were interested in a stop at Shake Shack while Vic was sitting with all the other squinting folks in the waiting room.

Vic reported a good session with the doctor, a petite woman with great bearing, and emerged with a card signifying that he should return in a year or so.

That leaves the cardio treatment as the last active medical adventure confronting the Creative Section. Vic is walking around with one hand holding the other to keep it from brushing the little monitoring device stuck about three inches northeast of the left, functionless nipple thing on his chest.

The Doc recommended some new reading glasses, so the excitement of the week is not yet complete.

We submit for your review the proposed Dance Off slide.

The route from our corner of Northern Fairfax, where Mr. Tyson once had his farm, curves through the landscape that has grown up around the Capital Beltway. Much of what was recognizable when some of us first arrived here more than forty years ago has disappeared beneath glass, concrete and increasingly imaginative claims about exactly where “Tysons” begins and ends.

One landmark has survived.

The Shopping Bag Building.

Its owners claim it is in Tysons Corner. It is a good ten minutes down the road from our corner, but we aren’t going to fight about it.

Known more formally as Tycon Center, the building was completed about the time Chairman Willie was contemplating leaving government service and getting on with the next chapter of his life.

Locally, however, nobody needed the formal name.

It was the Shopping Bag Building, thanks to the enormous curved architectural forms rising over the structure like the handles of a monumental grocery sack.

The Chairman eventually joined the fancy crowd upstairs, where the view from the top was reportedly pretty good.

We have a simpler relationship with the place.

When somebody from the Conference Table needs to head toward the medical complex—and everybody else wants a change of scenery—we look up, see the Shopping Bag, and know roughly where we are.

In Northern Virginia, that qualifies as tradition.

More tomorrow, if we are fortunate!

Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com