Ask Luke’s Mother-in-Law: Post-Christmas Edition

In which ex-cop/crazy cat lady/mom-in-law Martha Boyd answers your questions from the coziness of the Joshua Tree desert.

Hello All. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I understand that this will be seen on Friday rather than my typical Thursday, and we are taking off for New Year’s. I would like to start out with my prayers to the 2 NYPD officers who were killed just before Christmas, for the officer in Florida. As you know I am a former police officer. During my career I never shot anyone and the only time I drew my weapon was on the range. This is typical for most cops. We are not out there hunting down anyone; most of the time we are doing really boring things like taking stolen bike reports. Did you know that the call that is considered to be the most dangerous to a police officer is a domestic violence call?

One of the big reasons that I retired when my husband retired was that I was tired of getting shot at. On three different occasions my patol car was purposly shot at and wounded. Thank heavens it was only the car and not myself or my partner. In all three incidents my weapon was never fired. As I was not a cat with nine lives, I figured three had already been used and did not wish to try for number four. I loved police work and started when I was just 18 yrs old and lasted for 8 yrs. We must keep in mind – who would you call if there were no police officers? Maybe the Ghostbusters? Oh, and if the police go, maybe the fire department will be the next not to show up – because guess who protects the firefighters who are shot at? Good luck everyone – figure out how to deal on your own. Now stepping down from my soap box.

On the better topics. LYT, Julia and Miss Francis were all at my house for Christmas. As Julia was so good at Thanksgiving dinner, she pulled the Christmas dinner duty this year. Pretty darn good: we had turkey, gravy, rolls, brussels sprouts, carrots, stuffing, cranberry etc. I did the Christmas eve dinner with pork tamales, rice, beans, chicken taquitos, salsa and gucamole. Leftovers were had today, and will be for the next few days they are in Joshua Tree. Next week I am going to see Julia preform at the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. You can check out her stand-up on youtube by looking for “Julia Boyd stand up.”

This was Love Bug and Pirate’s very first Christmas, I think they and the presents all did well. Kitties are just like kids: get them a nice present and they play with the box and paper. The day after Christmas I will be off buying new kitty toys in the 1/2 price ornament section. They just love Christmas ornaments, much more than traditional cat toys. However I do think they enjoyed the furry mice that Santa left for them.

So now, my lovelies, on to the questions.

Randy O:

What in Gosh’s name we can do to calm things down all over the place?

I wish I knew, Randy. I don’t know why so many people appear to have just fallen off the sane truck. I know no one wants to give up the right to keep and bear arms here in the US. There are already so many weapons in the hands of kooks and nuts that if the sane ones gave them up we would really be in trouble. I think we all need to remember the old saying Do unto others ……. I also think that some of the so-called religious leaders need to quite stirring the pot and speak more on peace.

chaoslex:

First off, Merry Christmas to you and yours. I hope it’s a good one! 🙂
Secondly, I was wondering if you’ve heard of and/or listened to the Serial podcast? The innocence/guilt of Adnan Syed is the subject of many a water cooler discussion right now. Given your background in law enforcement, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the 1999 murder of Hae-Min Lee.

I am familiar with the case and that the young man has already had a couple of appeals to his conviction, but that a 3rd may be in the works due to some new information. The justice system is not foolproof and innocent people go to jail all of the time. That is why we have things like innocence project and serial. There are many good attornies and investigative reporters who are out there looking into many of these cases and many have been freed by their work.

We had a great Christmas, hope you did too.

scockery:

Printer ink…or why I haven’t used my printer in years.
The chips that prevent you from using refilled cartridges (and some printers themselves have a auto-service breakdown after x-amount of pages…which means you chunk the POS out the window and just buy a new one…who has a printer serviced?). Why aren’t the terrorist targeting Hewlett-Packard?

Well, I don’t have my ink jet printer ever serviced and rarely use it to print anything. I mostly use it as a scanner. Once in a while, if the laser printer is down, I will be forced to use the ink jet. My current ink jet I have had for about 5 yrs. When it dies I will just spend another $50 and get a new one. However, my laser printer is a different matter – that was very expensive to start and I do have it on a service contract. It prints out about 100 pages of work on an every day basis and I only go thru 2 toner carts a year which are included in the service contract. Don’t know why they are not targeting HP, but it is a weird world.

clashctyrkr:

OMG is that a Kokopelli plushie? wait that is a question, but not my official question. that would be: as a self proclaimed rock hound, have you ever taken vacations or trips to places for the natural rock formations? i’m thinking of places like, natural bridges beach in ca. or the grand canyon, i think so far my favorite is zion national park in utah. although i’ve never been to the grand canyon, so that could change, then again they have an airplane museum, so i’d be torn between which to see first.

Yes it is – I have attached a larger picture. My husband found it somewhere. Yellowstone is a great place, as is the Grand Canyon. We have great rock formations right here in Joshua Tree Nat. Park (see pic at the top of the column). This is skull rock. I have posted several pics of the rocks in the park on this site. Out here we also have gold, ruby and turquoise mines if you like to collect.

dnjscott:

Does he [the Mandalorian cosplayer]fix your computer in costume? Are you going to the Anaheim con or are you just mentioning it? I’ve been thinking of going since it’s so close to my place.

You will be happy to know that Mandalorians fix computers in blue jeans and leather jackets. The armour is a bit clunky for working in Earth offices. So jeans will be safe into the future. As far as the Convention in April, not sure yet. I am from Anaheim and have a place to stay, so maybe.

Nicnac:

“(LYT’s wife/boss)”Where is the sci-fi movie where we overthrow our wife/bosses?

Ah, but that will never happen as we know all of your secrets, know where you live and most likely feed you.

chaoswept:

I’m not familiar with “evap cooler”. I immediately thought of uncle Owen’s farm and Luke whining about having to fix it.

An evap cooler is an evaporative cooler which is widely used in the desert where we have low humidity. They are no good in areas with higher humidity as they cool with water and put humidity into the air. You know how you feel cooler when you are wet and stand in front of a fan? Well, that is basically how it works.

That is all for this week’s silliness. The next time we get together it will be 2015. Hope everyone got what they wanted for Christmas. I know you were all on Santas’ nice list. Keep the questions coming. Remember you can leave them on the site and also on Facebook. Tell your friends and neighbors, I’ll answer questions from anyone. Toplessrobot is a fun site so lets try to get more friends taking a look in 2015. Take care all. Be good to each other and as always Huggs.

This contest lives on your questions, readers, so let’s have them! Post your serious or silly queries in comments below.