The Christmas Martyr has spoken.

Several months ago I signed up for a six-week quilting class. Because I wanted to learn how to quilt, sure, but also because I was looking to expand my social circle to include a bunch of women who share my combined loves of lozenges and sitting.

I took this six-week class, and then I took a two-day class, and then I took a three-hour class, and then I asked if I could retake session two of the six-week class. At which point the instructor handed me a class schedule to recommend another course I might find helpful, Give Up Already 101. Little did she know I'm already deep into the 300-level of the Quit It curriculum.

So after like forty-five hours of concentrated instruction, I decided I would make everyone a quilt for Christmas. It seemed like a fantastic idea in September, sort of, to me. And I announced it to everybody like a jackass and ran out and bought a metric shit ton of fabric so I could spend the next four months cordoned off in the back of the house trying to jam a queen-sized quilt underneath the arm of my basic $279 Husqvarna sewing machine. It's a lot like trying to feed a VCR into paper shredder.

The indie quilt store where I took all the classes is less than a mile up the road; yesterday I busted in there with a rotary cutter in one hand, seventy-three too small quilt squares in the other hand, nine yards of purple flannel around my neck, and weeping. Like a sad, sad king whose scepter is just WAY too sharp.

As of today I have one quilt left. ONE QUILT LEFT. I'm actually really enjoying the process; I tend to learn better with endless hours of instruction coupled with an almost unbearable amount of immediate and tedious practice, so I feel I'm thriving. I would have been done by now but there was a Christmas onslaught of zombie orders that rightfully took priority; as it stands I expect to have this quilt completely finished around three in the morning on Christmas Day.

I've taken pictures of all the finished quilts but I don't want to post them yet-- I don't want anybody seeing the evidence and getting all disappointed this far before Christmas. Nothing like a baby blue and eggplant quilt that looks like it was hand-quilted by mice to make you wonder whatever happened to Nordstrom gift cards.

I'm the Foursquare Mayor of this Goddamn Safeway.

I've got a piece up at McSweeney's today that chronicles my manic highs and lows on Foursquare. I wrote it, surprisingly enough, after I discovered I'd just lost the title of mayor at my neighborhood Safeway. Once the wracked sobs and teeth gnashing subsided, it occurred to me that I might be overly invested in an application that awards points based solely on my ability to leave my house.****

Foursquare fun facts:

I once held the mayorships of two In-N-Burgers at one time. It was mid-August, I believe, though I'm not sure; around here we just refer to that period of time as "Camelot".

In the interest of quasi-privacy, I changed the number of the Safeway I temporarily owned and the name of the dude who apparently lives there now. The indignant power struggle, however, is all too real.

****I am the long-standing Foursquare mayor of my house. We've got a special going right now- if you steal the mayorship away from me, I'll smash your smartphone with a tack hammer in the garage.

I'm Foursquare friends with The Palazzo Resort in Las Vegas. The Palazzo Resort is currently checked in as "off the grid- checked in but hiding their whereabouts". I can only deduce by this that the 3,000-room Palazzo hotel is hanging out at The Palms casino.

I believe that Foursquare might be the most useless application currently available online, which explains why I love it so. "Erin," one might then ask, "What's the second most useless application?" Answer: The rest of the Internet ties for second place.