Geez, try to take one day off to deal with personal matters, and what happens? Our AirPort Base Station decides to fry its capacitors, a database server eats its own hard disk for lunch, and Apple (evidently worn down by our consistently witty barbs) finally gets with the love on the whole Apple retail stores gig and owns up to the plan publicly-- conveniently enough, at a time when we're so overwhelmed with hardware failures and personal stuff we couldn't actually produce a soap opera about it we tried. Coincidence? Yeah, right. You're going to have to work awfully hard to convince us that AirPort Base Stations and Power Mac 6100s don't have special remote control failure circuitry that Apple can trigger as a necessary component of "Project Distraction."

Regardless, the fact is this: Apple has reportedly admitted that it is planning to launch a chain of retail stores, and as first pointed out by faithful viewer Nina Tovish (yes, folks, she beat the rest of you to the punch), no less an authority that the Wall Street Journal has the skinny. Apparently the first boutique will open its doors in McLean, Virginia in just eleven days' time, at the swanky Tysons Galleria shopping mall. By yet another curious "coincidence," the AtAT staff will be stationed in West Virginia on that very day-- a mere four-hour drive from the mall in question, but sadly, prior commitments will prevent us from making the trip. Sounds like Apple had access to our travel itineraries when it picked an opening date.

For the record, Apple has only confirmed that its first store is opening on the 19th; it hasn't said anything about opening dates or locations of other stores, though we're assuming that sort of thing will be high on the list of things to discuss at the upcoming press event. Until the official list becomes public, however, we heartily recommend a nifty resource kindly pointed out to us by faithful viewer Andrea Parent; the folks over in the MacNN Forums are studiously tracking the rumored and "confirmed" sites for Apple's spiffy Mac paradises, in handy graphical format. It's great to see little Apple logos engulfing the entire continental United States... even the AtAT staff referred to as "blatant liars" further down the page. (Hey, when we mentioned the possibility of three stores in Boston, we were just passing on some info from the little birds... the same little birds, incidentally, who also correctly predicted that Apple would be announcing its retail plans this week. You are, of course, free to interpret that as you will; and if the birds are wrong, trust us-- we'll be more upset than anyone.)

By the way, that WSJ article was timestamped a mere nine minutes after the aforementioned database server bit the dust; meanwhile, it's probably also worth noting that the first Apple retail store just happens to be located in the same town as the CIA headquarters. Yeah, keep telling us that it's all just a coincidence. They're all out to get us!