Wow - that's a hell of a thing

So, my friend Robyn came over on Saturday with her electric guitar & amp, and we hung out, talked music, and played.  I was all nervous about it, 'cause of the suckage.  Turns out, I had nothing to worry about.  Sure, she's way ahead of me, but that was to be expected - she's been playing for three times as long as me (so, not long enough to make me feel like an ass, but long enough to know a LOT more than I do, and show me lots of new things).  In case it's not clear yet, I got a whole lot out of it.  Let's see:

1. The strumming patterns I've been avoiding because they are an added complication when I'm just learning something complicated - I can totally do them.  My big problem was the up-strums sounding like a dying cat - fixed, with one of her picks (she uses soft picks, which makes it much, much easier)
2. We went through a basic blues progression.  Rather, she did, and took me along for the ride.  This introduced me to finger picking, scales, and blues progressions.  She's going to either transcribe them to tab to send me, or maybe just photocopy the page and give it to me next time I see her, which is awesome.
3. It taught me that I can teach her things, too - which I am totally stunned by.  Granted, what she learned from me was the song I learned last thursday, Wild Thing, which is totally dead simple, but the point is that I have things I can teach her...
4. My plan for Wild Thing is deeply flawed.  The reason I couldn't do the "wild thing, I think I love you" part is because The Troggs use things I don't know yet - bar chords - to switch between G & C so quickly.  Basically, they make a shape, strum a C, slide down the fretboard a bit with the exact same shape, and strum a G, then back again.  What I take from this:  Ignore that part until I learn bar chords.

Anyways, yesterday I was practicing Hey Ya with the more complicated up-strumming, and it sounded very different and totally awesome.  Sure, I won't be getting up on stage any time soon, but it sounded great, and I'm really happy - and I feel like I'm way ahead of where I was on Saturday morning.

A+++ would buy again.  I believe I see a regularly scheduled little jam session at some point in the not so distant future.

On a separate note, Justin is trying to kill me.  I decided to was time to move forward from C, so I checked out the first lesson of stage 4, and he teaches 3 chords in one lesson.  What the hell!  Every other chord lesson has been one chord per lesson.  I'm going to take 3 days to assimilate it, one chord at a time - today was G7, which is like a stretchy C (my most hated chord) - will this one be my new most hated?  Possibly.

Anyway, things are going REALLY well.  Just need to keep at it - but it' easy to now - I want to e practicing all the time, 'cause I can actually make something close to music now, for a few limited songs, at least.