I think you can spend an awful lot on kit, much of which you'll want but never need. I have a large bag of manual lens from my SLR days sitting up in the loft. For years a carried them about everywhere I went, but on each outing rarely used more than two of them. In later years the bag got left in the boot of the car or at home.
Personally I'd go with miketoll's advice above. Use a reasonable general purpose zoom lens and find your niche. Later when you know what kit you really need then go out to buy it.
My thing during the summer is macro and this example photo was taken with my 8 mpix Panasonic FZ30 with a £35 raynox DCR-250 clipped on the front of it. I've uploaded to my website at fullsize and you can take it down your local high street copy shop and ask them to print A3. Most will do it for you for under £2 and it will give you an idea of the sort of quality you can expect from an 8 meg camera:
http://professor-moriarty.com/images/pub/aeshna.jpg
Of course you may want to go out and spend £1500-2000 in which case best of luck.