Welcome to SRP. Unfortunately, if you started with a DE than you already have followed a structured approach. It's not too hard to recover though and prevent yourself from losing face. Buy a razor, bang it on a sink faucet, try to hone it after putting on new scales and shave away! Whatever you learn from that will be beneficial to someone. Maybe not you so much, but someone else. I think you'll be just fine and will have lots of fun too. The other side of the coin are guys who are afraid to damage the gold wash on a blade and never learn to hone at all. The only drawback that worries me a little is simply shaving with an imperfect edge. Every perfect edge feels imperfect to the beginner and every imperfect edge is best perfected through trail and error (by shaving). So it's a challenge that becomes a Catch 22 like scenario. In your shotgun approach consider also buying a shave ready blade. It'll save you some time and a few blades, which are a little expensive and hard to come by.

P.S. Consider trying to get back on Glen's good side; experts in this field are few and far between. :-)