i'm new too. here's my plan: accumulate some bitcoins in a wallet on my phone to start with, then after it becomes more than i would carry in cash worry about setting up a second wallet offline to send them to.

do you have an android phone?

https://market.android.com/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet

you run the app, generate a wallet, and have people send bitcoins to the address. they should show up. it's that simple.

the hard part is convincing someone to send you bitcoins.