I feel you on the rationalization thing, ever since my back got all screwey I've decided to spend all the money I would have spent on my gym membership, supplements etc... on gear. Also its totally true about the hobby thing, if you think about even "expensive" guitars are dirt cheap compared things like flutes and violins.
That "shadow" only appears near autumn, and when they play at 17:00 local time, lol. Great coincidence it was brought up on the only week of the year it shows itself...
Hey, I didn't wanna derail John's thread, but i'm curious about the Apogee duet. What made you choose it? I know the Apogee stuff has a great reputation, but for a similar price new, a MOTU 8pre has 8 inputs, 16 channels, and MIDI i/o, or used, there's the 828 i mentioned. I'm fairly new to buying audio interfaces, so i'm sure there's something i'm missing, but $500 for 2 channels doesn't make sense to me? Are the A/D converters that much better?