The one was Texas medicine, the other was just railroad gin.

See HERE for the title reference.

Greetings from the land of the flat and the hot.

After something like a 20-year absence, I'm back in Texas on company business, although the 2017 version is a different company on different business in a different location.

The forecast for Amarillo, from where I type this?  94 degrees and incredibly sunny.  Every day.  All week.  The sky is a kind of scorched blue.  Not a deep blue you might see in Pennsylvania, but a washed-out variety, as if the sky itself was in the process of getting a tan.

Anyway, although I've probably spent, in total, maybe three weeks of my life in Texas, I've always felt that there are two versions of the state:  The one you hear about and the one you actually experience.

Part of what you hear about when Texas comes up is that it's the state of Ted Cruz, rabid anti-equality, fundamentalist Christian, and guns literally everywhere.  I'll be honest, that's never been my experience.  In fact, I've seen far more "open carry" nuts folks in Pennsylvania than I have in Texas.  And despite the impression one might get from the somewhat lizard-esque Senator Rafael Edward Cruz, I've met almost no one in Texas who wasn't incredibly nice.  Incredibly polite.  Whatever the opposite of acerbic (and Ted Cruz) is, quite frankly, seems to describe most Texans.

Case in point:  While eating dinner, I observed two older couples meeting in the restaurant.  One couple introduces a teenage daughter.  She actually more or less genuflected as a sign of politeness and respect.  You won't see that in NEPA, well, outside of a church.

I'll also note that the folks I'm working with this week epitomize what I noted above about Texas.  Just plain and simply nice people.  And the office they work in is shaped like an egg.  I kid you not.