Well, today I bought a camera.
I've been meaning to buy one for a long time, actually. About two years. But I never had anywhere near enough money until rather recently, nor the time to really pursue photography. Now I have both.
So after some trawling through eBay, the interwebz, Michaels Camera Store and Ted's, I came out of it all with the following:
  - A Canon EOS 450D (Also known as the Rebel XSi)
  - A Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens
  - A 4GB SD Memory Card
  - An infrared remote (I can't remember which one >_>)
  - A tripod. (too lazy to go and check what type it is, but it was reasonably cheap)
  - negative $1200 AU

So now I'm happy. At least, on the material side of things.

From what I read and through common sense, photography is having an image in your head, and reproducing that image using a camera and inspiration. Right now I have a camera in my hand and a bunch of scary settings. So all I'm doing is randomly changing exposure times, f stops and ISO settings to see what the hell happens. I feel clumsy OTL.
But it's fun!
There isn't enough time in the day for me to play with each kind of light enough, but I have lots of days, and I hope to be eventually able to get the hang of this.

Now it's very dark, and I haven't figured out how to use my remote yet, so I can't go outside and take like 5 minute exposures in pitch-darkness to see what happens, so now I'm gonna take the four photos that I think are somewhat worth keeping from my insane clicking today and play with them in photoshop.