I was watching the Houston Rockets play the Dallas Mavericks on TV one Saturday afternoon when the camera panned over into the crowd.  Up in the far reaches of the stands, I saw my friend Nick.  I tried calling him to tell him he was on TV, but he had shut his phone off, probably because he was at the game.  I hadn’t seen him since he’d moved down to Houston from here in Chicago.  He’d grown up here, but then had moved to Houston temporarily to attend a culinary school down there.  Once he finished, he came back here to Chicago, but he always talked about how much he’d loved Houston and the people down there.  Finally, at the beginning of the year, he was looking for a job and got shut out of everywhere.  Rather than move back in with his parents, he opted to head back down to Houston and stay with some friends he kept in touch with there.  Soon he found a job in a kitchen and seems to be doing well for himself.  I’ll admit that I miss having him around up here despite the fact that I always had to drive him around everywhere.