Tag Archives: weird

Weird Sh*t My Husband Owns: Record Collection

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re pretty much celebrities is our tiny town of Lake City. Why, you ask? Well, our previous Weird Sh*t posts were featured in a local magazine (renamed to “Weird Stuff” haha)! This might seem ridiculous, but we get stopped all the time because of the article.
So, back by popular demand…Allison’s take: Ok, don’t get me wrong, I love music. I love listening to records. I love the sound quality from comes from vinyl. However, I think this record collections has gotten a little out of control. Collecting records isn’t exactly weird (especially with all the vinyl-hipsters of today), but having a collection this large IS weird! The pictures don’t even show all of them!
I clearly knew about the record collection before we got married, I guess I just didn’t realize how much space it would take up. Our entire sunroom is full of them! Ray’s Take: I LOVE music. I love old things. I also love finding good deals. So collecting records is like the perfect storm for me!
There are so many things I love about vinyl records, the music, the artwork, the ability they have to transport you to another time, how they can bookmark points in your life. I love the smell of vinyl, the feel of a new vinyl being put on a record player, the experience of doing nothing but listening to that record. Not cleaning and listening to a record, not reading and listening to a record, just listening.
I know I have a lot of records now, and my collecting has slowed a bit over the past two years, but I still enjoy the hunt and the joy in playing a new record!
Just having them around is a comfort to my soul.

With all that being said, since I have so many records, alliray.com is going to start having a new feature once a month (or whenever I get around to not being a bum and write them) called Ray’s Record Review (because we like alliteration). It won’t always be musical reviews, it will be more of a post about some vinyls that I’ve been enjoying lately.
See keep your eyes out for that!

Weird Sh*t My Husband Owns: Vol. 2

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Allison’s take: Where to start? Well, it’s giant, heavy, velvet and medieval. Did I mention it’s ridiculous and not exactly my aesthetic? Ray bought this while we were dating and at the time I thought it was kind of funny hanging on the wall in his tiny apartment. It’s a little (a lot) less funny now that it’s in our house. Also, we don’t even live in a castle…

Ray’s take: Oh wow! This gem. Ok, the story… I went to an auction with Dale Tompkins which was kind of a bust, but on the way home we found a yard sale. I noticed this right off and Dale said I should buy it (side note: I think sometimes Dale says stuff like this to be silly or as a joke, but of course I took it to heart and realized I needed to own it). I went over and saw that it was the one thing at the yard sale that had no price on it. When everything has a price except one item I kind of always assume it’s expensive. I mean lets be real, who would ever want to part with something so magnificent?! It’s solid wood so its really heavy and hand carved! Also, it has red velvet on it!!! I then went on and found a few more treasures at the sale. I asked how much they were asking for the glorious lion piece and they told me since I was already purchasing other items they would sell it to me for $15. A man cannot turn down a hand-carved, solid wood coat of arms WITH weapons for $15. So, that was the day the Lion with crossing swords on a red velvet field became the Hancock Crest.

Weird Sh*t My Husband Owns

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I’m going to be honest, my husband owns a lot of weird sh*t. He lived on his own for about six years before we were married and apparently spent most of his time acquiring weird-o things. This is going to be an ongoing series on alliray, so get excited. Let’s start off with this gigantic ship painting:
Allison’s take:
I mean, seriously? This painting isn’t the ugliest in the world, but it sure is the biggest. Where will one ever put it? Right now it lives in one of our upstairs bedrooms on the floor because we don’t have any wall space that’s big enough. When he lived in an apartment it took up an ENTIRE wall of his bedroom.
Ray’s take:
I bought this painting at an auction. I like nautical themed paintings with ships in them a lot and I have several others. This one was just so large and majestic, so I waited all night during the auction and the auctioneer never tried to sell it. Near the end of the evening he asked if there was anything else around that people wanted to bid on (it was getting late by this point and a lot of people had left). I told one of the helpers that I was interested in the painting so the auctioneer put it up for bid and started it off at $500… I thought to myself “dear lord, i would never pay anything near that” so he kept getting lower and lower and lower and lower untill he finally said “ok $20? anyone want it for $20?” so i jumped at that! I lifted my bidding card, and the rest is history. I loaded it up in the back of my truck, got it home to my tiny apartment and put it up in my bedroom. It took up the whole wall and I felt like a king.

And there ya go…