Yes, the Antenna!

[N8XI]

John,
Since this is your first antenna, my first recommendation would be to find a ham or club in your area.
They may be able to give you a hand putting an antenna together.

Stay away from the magnetic loops, even the very experienced have a time getting them properly tuned
and they are very narrowbanded!

IMHO, your first antenna could be a 40M Inverted Vee (or Dipole).
This will give you local QSO's during the day and some nice DX at night.

You have 40 to 45m (131-147feet) to play with.
So, when you have worked all the DX in the world with the 40M antenna 
You could take it down and rebuild it as a 130-135ft dipole fed with 450ohm ladder line
and work all bands 80-10, with a good tuner...
Maybe even feed one side (1/2) against ground and work some 160M.

GL es 73, Rick - N8XI

[VO1FZ]

Just for fun, I'll go against the whole G5RV thing.

Not that it doesn't work - it does.  Nicely on 80, 40, 20, and 12.  Does not efficiently on 15 or 10, even though your tuner might well load them OK.  But here's the problem.  I hear more discussion on the air about repairing and modifying these things than I do for any other antenna, and its original design sometimes bears little resemblance to the original design.

As an alternative, check out the Alpha Delta DX-CC.  It's a truly all-band (non-WARC, so you don't get 30,17, or 12 meters) antenna that is extremely durable and is designed specifically for each band.  The only modification I've made to mine is to add a choke balun.  Oh, and you'll get about 65 khz bandwidth on 80.  15 meters is actually 3/4 wavelengths long per side, so the pattern is a little different there.
DXCC's aren't hugely more expensive than some G5RV's, and they are very predictable.

I should add they are a bit ugly to some eyes, but the gray wire tends to blend in a bit at a decent height.