Stupid C

My most hated chord of the week is C.  I have no problems making it, but going from something else to it, and back again, is a total pain in the butt.  Stretchiness doesn't bother me at all, it's just moving my fingers to the correct positions, and finding the strings.  *sigh*

I'm getting better all the time, though - I can kind-of-sort-of play Hey Ya now - but sllllooooowwww.....  My basic practice routine is:

• Finger exercises, going up the fret-board as far as I can - ~5 min
• Random chords - just pick a chord, make it, if I screw it up then fix it and do the strum-pluck-each-string-strum-again thing, but if I get it right, just move to the next - 5 min (sometimes 10, if I feel like it)
• 1 minute changes - ~6-7 minutes
• Play Hey-Ya at 80 bpm - 5 min
• Play Peggy Sue at 180 bpm - yes, that's right, at 2.5 times the tempo of Hey Ya - note that it does not contain the C chord - 5  min

All in all, it works out to about a half hour.

My fingers continue to mutate in weird ways - I had a hangie bit today that has been catching underneath strings for the past few days, so I cut it off.  Ungh.  Pretty gross.

And my strings - my poor, pitiful strings.  Yep, I suddenly realized yesterday that the guitar is sounding like crap - and it's the strings, not me.  I once heard someone say "the gunk makes the funk" in regards to strings - this appears to be a viscous pack of lies.  The gunk makes the instrument sound like crap.  I'll keep playing them for a week or two, then look at getting them replaced.

All in all, doing ok, but still hating C.  And I hate it enough that I'm not watching any new lessons, just going to wait until I can do C relatively easily, then move on.

Also, I feel like my progress is slowing down - I'm still moving forward, but starting to wonder if I'm going to plateau soon.