Day 4 – Ten interesting things about myself.

1. I have five cats and three dogs. They are all named after movies or television shows – except one that the neighbor girl named before I wound up with him.
  Dogs:
  Abby – from NCIS. Abby was almost named Kate, but there was another dog in the household apartments named Katie and that was too similar.
  Jethro – also from NCIS. He was almost named Gibbs or McGee.
  Frankie – from Rizzoli and Isles. My roommate at the time helped name him. We were big fans of the show.
  
  Cats:
  Mouse – from The Matrix. She squeaks like a mouse, and is small and gray like a mouse. The Matrix character just fit with my criteria.
  Three of Four – from Star Trek. It’s a Borg designation. Her full name is Three of Four Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Van Hoosen, but we call her Three for short.
  Phoenix – from X-Men. Phoenix is my favorite character. I also believe my cat is the reincarnation of a previous kitty I owned.
  Kashyyyk – from Star Wars. Every Star Wars geek has a cat named Wookie or Chewbacca. Boring. He is big and exotic-looking, so I decided to name him after the Wookie Planet instead.
  Kona – He’s the odd kitty out. He was a stray in the neighborhood, and I wasn’t going to keep him. The neighbor girl named him, and it stuck. When I adopted him, I looked up the name on IMDB.com and found three characters named “Kona” but I hadn’t seen any of the movies. I just searched today and discovered there was a Kona Chief in Cloud Atlas – so I’ll count that. Hooray!
2. I am obsessed with the number three.
3. I suffer from audio hallucinations.These are different than hearing voices, although sometimes I do hear voices. I will hear music, usually snippets of music. I have discovered most often there is a “B” note that features predominately in the series of notes I hear. Electronic noises are the worst. I would hear telephones from places I worked after I went home, or the door chime of a music store I frequented. I have to change my ringtone constantly because I will start to hear it. This has been a problem since childhood, but I didn’t tell anyone until a few years ago when the hallucinations got really bad. I was going through a period in my life I affectionately now call “The Dark Times.” I decided to tell my best friend (who is also a therapist) because the situation had gotten bad enough I was going to tell my therapist. I wanted my best friend to tell me I was crazy – if I was crazy. She said I was not crazy. That since I could recognize that the hallucinations were coming from my brain and not something or someone actually talking to me, that they were just hallucinations. I thought that was awesome that I was not crazy, and promptly googled it. Turns out there are a lot of people who suffer from audio hallucinations – most often musicians who have OCD. It gets worse when I am super-stressed. During The Dark Times, the audio hallucinations would wake me up. I will often hear movie quotes. I heard Jack Nicholson over my right shoulder in the shower and it startled me so badly I jumped forward and cracked my head on the shower wall. It was that moment I decided to tell someone about the sounds. I was pleased to learn I was not crazy.
4. I will repeatedly watch a movie or tv show over and over and over. In college, I watched The Lion King seven times in one evening. During The Dark Times I watched the movie Nine every night (sometimes two or three times) for a year and a half. My fiancé will put on the episode Once More With Feeling from Buffy the Vampire Slayer if I get cranky or depressed about something. I adored him. He knows me well.
5. I probably have some form of OCD, but have never been officially diagnosed. My therapist loosely agreed I had it some form, but I was never given any official tests or anything.
6. I am a huge sci-fi geek. Have been since childhood. My standard joke when someone suggests a movie they think I’d like is to ask, “Does it have robots or aliens in it?” My current favs are Star Wars (all of them), Doctor Who, The Fifth Element (mul-ti-pass), Firefly, Star Trek Voyager, and Battlestar Galactica (the reboot). I am so excited for the new Star Wars movie I cry every time I see one of the trailers. Cannot wait for December . . . . I’m getting married, the new Star Wars comes out, and my favorite character (River Song) is going to be in the Doctor Who Christmas special!!!!
7. I collect Care Bears.
8. I write music. I’ve recorded an EP. You can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/martikole
9. I was born to an Aquarius mother and Aquarius father, my birth-grandmother was an Aquarius, I was adopted by an Aquarian mother, her mother was also an Aquarius. Oh, and I am an Aquarius.
10. I am deathly afraid of tornadoes.