Close my eyes... ignore the smoke?

I feel kind of sick because I see the fire as some kind of interesting spectacle. I like looking at it night by night and seeing how the flame patterns grow and change along the mountain range. I tried to take pictures but my point-and-shoot was kind of too crappy to handle distance shooting in the dark. I genuinely feel for the people that it's affected, but for me it's something mesmerizing to watch. It's fascinating to me that for nearly a week now it's had the strength to cast a smoky, ashy cloud over all of the east SFV. It's got its own Wikipedia page and is apparently the largest California wildfire of the last 100 years. It's a beast. I'm in awe of it.

I wonder sometimes if I'm not as thick-skinned as I may let on. I'm pretty good at separating obvious sarcasm and joking put-downs from actual insults, but there are times when people straddle the line, or I know they mean whatever they're saying, and it really affects me. That's where my weakness comes in. I should be better at accepting criticism, and/or better at deflecting and ignoring mean-spirited comments. My mom gets legitimately mad at me when I make comments about my appearance being kind of manly because according to her she doesn't see how I could possibly have that opinion of myself. The truth is, I'm still thinking about some comments that were written about me on JuicyCampus a year ago (which in and of themselves dredged up some lame memories of being teased in middle school - see how farked up this gets?). I should be able to put those demons to rest by now, but for some reason I have still got issues.

On a lighter note, I've been downloading a lot of awesome new (not all of it actually new, just new to me) music lately and I'm pretty stoked about that. Maybe soon enough it will be making its way into the shuffle playlists :) Speaking of which, anyone who cares to comment: do any of ya'll actually care about the playlists still? I mean, I enjoy putting them together but I don't want to feel all pretentious and assume that anyone gives a fiddler's fart about my songs...