This will be quick because I have a long to-do list, as generally happens to women before a holiday. But they’re all happy errands, for the most part, so no biggie.

First, let’s go with the lighter stuff, if you consider waiting for a fool to drown “lighter,” but you know my sense of humor.

There’s a guy who’s been hanging around the local waterways for a while, navigating what’s charitably called a “homemade houseboat.” It looks like a shipping container sitting on a raft, the raft itself floating on 55-gallon plastic drums. It might not be a shipping container, but that’s about the size. Everything about it is what you’d call “makeshift,” and maybe “half-assed.” It made the papers when it required Coast Guard assistance to get through the considerable currents at Port Huron, where Lake Huron drains into the St. Clair River. Once past, though, the captain — of the houseboat — waved them off and said he was fine. He’s now docked in Lexington, Mich., and the story goes that he’s trying to do “the Great Loop,” or the circumnavigation of the eastern U.S. via the Atlantic Ocean, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. It’s unconfirmed, but if he is, I’d advise taking a few days off, or even a few months.

The gales of November are blowing as we speak, with a blizzard bearing down on the U.P. and just general misery everywhere else. If that ridiculous thing leaves the safety of its current mooring, it’s bound to be broken up before he reaches Saginaw Bay.

On a darker note, I don’t know how I missed this earlier in the week, but here’s a gift link to a great analysis of the Epstein emails by that guy whose name I always have to look up, Anand Giridharadas:

At the dark heart of this story is a sex criminal and his victims — and his enmeshment with President Trump. But it is also a tale about a powerful social network in which some, depending on what they knew, were perhaps able to look away because they had learned to look away from so much other abuse and suffering: the financial meltdowns some in the network helped trigger, the misbegotten wars some in the network pushed, the overdose crisis some of them enabled, the monopolies they defended, the inequality they turbocharged, the housing crisis they milked, the technologies they failed to protect people against.

This is Giridharadas’ particular hobbyhorse; he writes a lot about the global elite, who care less for the rest of us than they do their own spouses. But it’s pretty perceptive, rich with detail and observations like this:

Many of the Epstein emails begin with a seemingly banal rite that, the more I read, took on greater meaning: the whereabouts update and inquiry. In the Epstein class, emails often begin and end with pings of echolocation. “Just got to New York — love to meet, brainstorm,” the banker Robert Kuhn wrote to Mr. Epstein. “i’m in wed, fri. edelman?” Mr. Epstein wrote to the billionaire Thomas Pritzker (it is unclear if he meant a person, corporation or convening). To Lawrence Krauss, a physicist in Arizona: “noam is going to tucson on the 7th. will you be around.” Mr. Chopra wrote to say he would be in New York, first speaking, then going “for silence.” Gino Yu, a game developer, announced travel plans involving Tulum, Davos and the D.L.D. (Digital Life Design) conference — an Epstein-class hat trick.

Landings and takeoffs, comings and goings, speaking engagements and silent retreats — members of this group relentlessly track one another’s passages through JFK, LHR, NRT and airports you’ve never even heard of. Whereabouts are the pheromones of this elite. They occasion the connection-making and information barter that are its lifeblood. If “Have you eaten?” was a traditional Chinese greeting, “Where are you today?” is the Epstein-class query.

A long read, but it kept my interest throughout.

And with that, it’s off to tackle the to-do list. At the end, I’ll have a homemade apple pie, a brined turkey, the makings of tomorrow’s green-bean dish and maybe time for a cleaned bathroom or drink with a friend. (I’m hoping for the latter.)

Have a great Thanksgiving, all. Back after.