Thanks for the encouragement. Yep, still determined, and like Ive heard, I'm looking at it as a journey, not a destination. Sometimes I feel abit intimidated when I watch a pro--seems impossible to obtain at my age, but then I remind myself its just one day at a time, and when this journey is over for me, I'll be a better player than I am today. I started off for the 1st 2 months trying to pick-up what I could off of you tube, but it started occurring to me that without structure I wouldn't really get anywhere worthwhile. So I have about 5 mo of structured practice. So far I have learned the 9 or so basic open chords, the adds and sus that go with them, the 5 minor pentatonic, the a minor, b minor, c minor scales, and am working on the c major scale. I like the beginning of a bit of music theory that's in your starter lessons, I can see where that could be important down the road. That's why I have worked so hard on the scales. There not a song so they don't have that feeling, but I feel its very good practice for down the road. Working on 3 tunes--arpeggio of House of the rising Sun. the strum of Runaway Train, and strum of Puff the magic Dragon. Also working for over 3 mo on the F and B bar chord. I have them sounding pretty good, but Puff has been the toughest tune trying to maintain tempo going from G to B bar. Cant quite do it yet. Also working on the F5, G5, A5 power chords for later. I had horrible wrist pain that started about a month in and lasted for at least 3 months. Its finally getting better. Found a clamp at a local store that i use to exercise my hand, and started taking vitamin B6, it all seemed to help. Also working hard on proper finger placement when doing scales, you know--reaching with them, rather than them flying all over the place--lol. Darn--It just occurred to me after this long chat--there's a lot to this undertaking----lol