I've come to the following sort of conclusion: I need more equipment
I LOL'd (I really did!). Another one bites the GAS!
Simplest thing to do is to go for a more expensive interface that has a pair of mic preamps built in (Edirol UA-25, M-Audio FastTrack Pro, etc.). These things are great as they have mic pres, headphone amp and do everything you need in a compact, fairly high quality solution. No extra gear or cables needed either. Computer, interface and headphones/monitors and you're up and recording.
Next way to approach it is a line level interface and mixer with mic preamps. The mic preamps in most mixers are OK to start with, and some better mixers (Alesis, Mackie, etc.) have pretty good preamps that you'd actually have to go quite expensive in a preamp to beat them. Interface, there are a variety available and they are a bit cheaper (not having mic pres in). The nice thing about this approach is that you can also use the mixer for live stuff and if you want to upgrade anything, you don't have to upgrade everything at once.
If you have a desktop computer (as opposed to a laptop), rather go for a PCI interface, which are cheaper, more reliable and usually have a lower latency than an external interface.
You could make do with a set of closed back headphones until you can get monitors, and even when you get monitors, the headphones are the only way to go for monitoring while you are tracking.
That's all I can think of now. Any more Qs, fire away.
