Month: December 2016

From the Internet:

Well, I’m in the hospital to start off my Christmas break! Today has not been a good day. I decided to go horseback riding, something I haven’t done for years. It turned out to be a big mistake! I got on the horse and started out slowly, but then we went a little faster; and before I knew it, we were going as fast as the horse could go. I couldn’t take the pace and fell off, but caught my foot in the stirrup with the horse dragging me. It wouldn’t stop. Thank goodness the manager at Toys-R-Us came out and unplugged the machine. But he had the nerve to take the rest of my change so I wouldn’t attempt to ride the elephant.

By Jim Hagarty
2016

I have done some stupid things in my life.

Stupid in the sense that they made no sense.

And yet, somehow, some of the best things I have ever done have been the result of some of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. Worst usually involved money, but not always.

I have suffered through buyer’s remorse so many times, it’s a thing now, a part of my character. I can hardly buy a pair of socks without thinking I should have gotten the blue ones instead of the black ones. But, of course, I only know this the first time I put the black ones on.

I have spent more time standing in line at the returns counter in stores than I have for tickets to concerts, plays and hockey games. I am well-known around town by all those whose first question is, “Is there something wrong with this?” Yes there is, I reply. The thing that is wrong with it is that I bought it.

But buyer’s remorse has always set in after a purchase has been made. Today, as I write, I am about to go the store to buy a thing and for the first time ever, I have pre-buyer’s remorse. I’m feeling badly about even considering plopping down the money for this thing.

But then I think back to those other decisions where logic played no part and yet things came out better than just all right. I am often grateful for my faulty powers of reasoning. The house I sit in at the moment was as ugly as a toe wart when I paid too much for it 31 years ago this month. It has increased in value six times since then.

So here I go. It’s too late to stop me now. MasterCard and I are on a mission and will not be stopped!

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

If you need me, I’ll be sitting beside our Christmas tree, fretting.

By Jim Hagarty
2016

The Hagarty household is so far behind the times, we do not even have a flatscreen TV.

So, the decision has been made that this family embarrassment just has to end. I have been given strict orders that I am not to go to any more second-hand stores and bring home any more perfectly good TVs for $8. Let me repeat that: $8.

Let the investigation phase begin. Or to put it better, to resume. I have been researching flatscreen TVs for 10 years, never once coming close to buying one, but becoming more knowledgeable about them than some of the salespeople in the stores. I have had conversations with some of these young men and women and before the talk has ended, I have told them information about their TVs that they obviously didn’t know. Strangely, they have always found reasons to go serve someone else.

Still, all my brilliance aside, no flatscreen TVs at the Hagartys. This is despite the fact that there are five TVs in the house, four of them on active duty.

But, that all ends this Christmas. On the morning of the big day, a flatscreen will be sitting in the corner by the Christmas tree. So like a tiger on the hunt for a hapless wildebeest, I quietly, stealthily, make my approach. I go online to look anonymously.

And there it is, after five minutes of searching:

A Sony Model XBR75Z9D. It is a 75-inch beauty.

Only $11,999.99

But just below it, unbelievably, is an 85-inch Sony for only $11,499.99, a full $500 less. How can they give you 10 inches more for $500 less?

Forget those two, however, and I did when I scrolled down a bit further.

A 100-inch Sony for which no price is listed. In the same way you will never see a price advertised for a Rolls Royce. If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it. I have to email the company for a quote.

But this is the one.

It has:

4K HDR Processor X1 Extreme
Object-based HDR remaster
Backlight Master Drive
Dual database processing
Super Bit Mapping 4K HDR
Backlight Master Drive Calibrated beam LED design
Backlight Master Drive Discrete LED control
X-tended Dynamic Range PRO: backlight brilliance
4K X-Reality PRO
TRILUMINOS Display
Motionflow XR
3D
Google Cast
Google Play
Clear Audio Plus
Clear Phase
DSEE Digital Sound Enhancement Engine
Cinematic S-Force Front Surround
Photo Sharing Plus
IR Blastercontrol (remote control)
Video and TV SideView app

These are all the things I have been pining for for the past decade and now the time is right. So, I will email for a quote. And with the $8 saved that I would have spent on another second-hander, I will be able to make a good downpayment.

Providing also that our son and daughter drop out of university and I go back to delivering goat’s milk door to door.

It you would like some goat’s milk, please email me for a quote.

One of Canada’s premiere singer-songwriters since the seventies has been the great performer Valdy who, as well as a wonderful live act, has many records to his credit over the decades and several hit singles. He was in my hometown of Stratford, Ontario, Canada in March and I was lucky enough to get asked to open his show. The two of us will be on stage again this coming April 7. JH

By Jim Hagarty
2015

Warren Buffett and I have a lot in common.

Males, fathers, eyeglass wearers. Balding. Speak English. Pants go on one leg at a time.

But our biggest shared characteristic is our incredible financial acumen. Our brains don’t operate in the same way others do. Ours are functioning on a whole different, elevated level. Don’t feel badly that yours doesn’t. Warren and I are special.

My evidence of the above truths, is this. (You may need to follow the bouncing ball to keep up.)

Today, I entered the McDonald’s drivethrough, wanting a cup of coffee. I told the woman who greeted me through the speaker that I had a card for a free one. I had collected seven little stickers from previous cups I had drank and attached them to this card. This entitled me to a free medium coffee. At the last minute, and in my enthusiasm, I asked her to include a carrot muffin. She said that would be $1.65.

Now here’s where the acumen kicked in.

“Really?” I said, unbelieving. “Just for the muffin?”

The reason for my skepticism was that I have, in the past, paid just over $2 in total for a medium coffee and muffin at McDonald’s. Now I was being asked for $1.65 for the muffin alone.

I had to think fast. Buffett and I are good at that. We make decisions quickly and change our minds slowly. The mark of most great men.

I slipped the free card out of sight and when I drove up to the window, I told the speaker woman there that I didn’t have the card after all. That I wanted to pay cash for my purchase.

“That will be $2.10,” she said, looking a little confused.

Therefore – try to follow the logic – I acquired a carrot muffin for next to nothing.

When I got to the window, and was handed my food, I asked the woman there how much a medium coffee on its own would cost.

“$1.82, plus tax,” she replied.

I pulled off to the side, activated the calculator on my phone, and quickly came to this conclusion: By paying cash for my purchase, I had received a free muffin.

The only flaw in my operation, and this is one I need to correct in future, is that if I had paid with my debit card instead of with cash, the cost would have been $2.09 instead of $2.10 because in Canada we have done away with the penny so all costs paid in cash are rounded up or rounded down depending on which side of half way the purchase falls. Use your debit or credit card and you pay the exact price, no rounding.

I will admit, that it is that penny that signifies the central and only difference between Warren Buffett and me. He would have never made an error such as that. This explains why he has $70 billion and I have less than $70 billion. But, we both have some dollars, another similarity.

Also this one: He steers his car through McDonald’s drivethrough too.

Frequently.

By Jim Hagarty
2016

I was in a convenience store yesterday, buying a chocolate bar, and before I left, the woman behind the counter said, “You have a good day, hon.”

Hon?

Unless I am mistaken, that is a short version of the word “Honey” which is a traditional term of endearment in our culture. In this instance, the woman and I did not know each other and yet, she called me, “Hon.”

Maybe no surprise here as I am easily impressed, but for a younger woman to call a 65-year-old man “Hon” made me feel really good.

There used to be a woman in one of the drivethroughs I frequent on my coffee runs who always called me, “Sweetheart.” I am fully aware that she called everyone who drove by her window “Sweetheart” but that understanding did not diminish by even one tiny bit the good feeling that being called “Sweetheart” always gave me. I missed her when she moved on to maybe better things.

I am going out on a limb here to make the wild guess that this woman came to my central province of Ontario from Canada’s most easterly province of Newfoundland which is an island and the last province to join our federation in 1949. There are many former Newfoundlanders who have moved to my small city in Ontario and some of the ones I have met do not spare the terms of endearment, even with strangers.

When my wife and I spent a couple of weeks in Newfoundland in the ’90s, we were blown away by the friendliness of the people there and that is when I first noticed that women, especially, had no trouble calling men they had never met “love” or “honey” or “sweetheart” or “dear”. Or “sweetheart” shortened to “sweetie.” From the men you might get “pal” or “buddy”.

Another young woman at a drivethrough, often addresses me as “friend” even though we are only drivethrough acquaintances. She is a very jolly soul, always smiling, and it is nice to be referred to as her friend even though I’m pretty sure we are not friends.

I am a very reserved guy but I do like to throw out a compliment or two now and then if I think they are deserved. If someone in a shop has been a big help to me whether or not I buy anything, I will let them know that. And if workmen come to the house and I am pleased with the job they do, I will phone their boss to let them know how impressed I am.

But terms of endearment, I’m afraid, are reserved for my doggie.

On the other hand, I can be pretty free with terms of extreme peevement from time to time when the situation seems to warrant it. Last year, for example, after a very unpleasant encounter, I called a stranger the “biggest asshole I have ever met” to his face. Not a high point in my relationships with others, I admit, but I still think it was justified.

However, karma got me good a short time later when a fiend of a neighbour called me the very same thing. I didn’t think I deserved that, of course, and to make him even madder, I asked him if I could use what he had said as a character reference on a resume I was preparing. He blew his top, predictably.

I think there is a reason that humans are easily impressed by simple terms of endearment from strangers. It goes to our very basic desire to be loved.

That need, acquired at birth, also underpins most cases of performance anxiety, often known as stage fright. What if the strangers in the seats in front of us do not approve of what we are delivering for their benefit? That answer is simple. They will withhold their love.

And there are few humans, whether nine or ninety, who can abide that. Our separation anxiety, given to us at birth when the cord is cut, follows us all the rest of our days. It is amazing the lengths we will go to keep that fear of abandonment under control. And it’s why, it is so nice to hear someone call us their “sweetheart” even if we really aren’t.

Our needs are basic. We all need food, water, shelter …

And love.