Weekends, I am doing less than during the week

I still practice every day, but weekends I am only doing one session per day.  It looks like it may stay like that, too.  But perhaps that's not a bad thing - just what my practice schedule is.

Well, I've finally broken the 60 chord change per minute barrier - E-D.  Yay!  And D-min is coming along - I still flub it a fair bit, but I'm getting better at finding the strings.

Now for the weird - since I started, my fingertips have felt... weird.  Like I'm growing callouses beneath a layer of healthy skin.  I was happy about this, because I need the callouses to play, and having some nice healthy skin growing over top means it doesn't really affect my life in any other way.  It was like a hidden superpower - go-go-gadget GUITAR-FINGERS!  This was the case until this morning.  Callouses broke the surface, and my fingertips are flaky and weird looking now.  I'm a little shocked that this change occurred overnight - it's freaky to think that your body can change like that in 24 hours.

I'm also making friends with the Metronome.  He basically tells me that my sense of rhythm really sucks.  :(  I'll start playing, and be fine for the first few bars, do some chord changes, then suddenly notice that, while I'm on the right chord, my timing is waaaay off.  Like, by a whole tick of the metronome.  My gal was helping me stay on track over the weekend - it was really great.  She'd touch my arm when I needed to strum - which was really helpful.  And this morning, I went through it myself, and was a lot more aware of the metronome, and keeping in better time with it.  Had to correct myself a few times, but didn't get totally out of sync with it like I was on Saturday.

So, progress.  My playing is getting better, though it still sounds pretty far from "music".  I am slowly approaching that point, though.  I made it through 3 little birds 3 times (so, I guess, the entire song) this morning without any glaring stupidity.  Flubbed the first strum of some of the chords a few times, but that's as bad as it got.  That was at 90 strums per minute.  Hope to get up to 120/minute at some point in the next month.  I think I'm gonna just start adding 5 bpm per day, and see how I do.