I'm such a slacker when it comes to writing entries. This bothers me, but apparently it doesn't bother me enough to motivate me. Sometimes, I do get motivated, but then all this time has passed and nothing I write is contemporary anymore.

Anyway.

Some stuff happened, and now I have a date with NormalGirl. That's the girl from the comic yesterday. I was going to give her a different nickname, but NormalGirl fits my tongue better.

At least I'd like to think so.

That's bad. I shouldn't have written that. Oh, well, can't be helped now. It's not like I have some magic button, labeled backspace perhaps, with which I could erase stuff I've typed.

But my date with the hot girl isn't what I was going to write about. Nope, I was going to write more crap about this guitar and how I'm trying to learn to play make non-deadly noises with it.

I suppose that my strumming has gotten better. At least the upstrokes are better. That whole pointer that MusicalYuppieDude gave me, about turning my wrist when I strum upwards, has worked wonders. I still have a big problem with hitting extra strings when I strum. I can only hope that the frequency of these errors will diminish over time.

I also mentioned before that I may be tone deaf, because I couldn't seem to ever get the blasted contraption in tune. Well, I found this nifty guitar tuner program. It lets me pluck a string into the microphone on my computer, then it tells me how far off, and in which direction, I am from the desired note.

All of my strings were way the fuck off. But now they're not. I can tell this because the computer program tells me so, but I can also tell because of my cats.

See, before, when I'd strum the guitar, three things would happen. First, Happy would come running, hopeful that whatever animal torture ritual I was performing would leave edible body parts strewn around the room. Second, Nugget would haul ass down to the basement, for fear that he was about to become my next victim. Third, Buddy would ignore me, just like he always does when I do something interesting.

But now when I make noise with the guitar, all three cats ignore me.

Seriously, let me try to read a book or take a shit, and Buddy is all over me, but let me move and make noise and actually do something interesting, and he ignores me. What's up with that? Cats are weird.

My ability to count to four while strumming hasn't improved, but my ability to at least stick with a certain rhythm has gotten better. Not getting caught on a string when I strum has helped with that. So I can kinda fake it like I know how to count. So that's cool. Chicks dig guys who can count.

It's really amazing how much more fun and satisfying it is to strum a well-tuned guitar than it is to strum one that's badly out of tune. I estimate, in fact, that it's 833,241 times more fun. That's a lot.

The tips of every finger on my left hand are numb. I'm finding it difficult to type coherent words. This, I also assume, will get better as time progresses.

I've gotten better at making chords, but I still suck badly at changing from one chord to another. You're supposed to change chords between notes. I'm lucky if I can change chords between geologic eras. This has to get better, if only because it couldn't get any worse.

That's about it I guess. I'm getting better, but I'm still guitarded.

Did I mention that I have a date with NormalGirl?