"I always have the last word with my wife: 'yes dear'."
-Mr. S

Today and last night have been a bit hectic in my personal life, but not so much in the gallery.  My girlfriend Elsa had a miserable day yesterday, and usually when she has a bad day I get an ear-full in the evening after we both get home.  In this case she lost her keys, ran into some difficulties while she was trying to take care of our power bill, and found out that her evil taskmaster of a boss would be observing her at work today and passing judgement.  While my main modus operandi is driven by a sense of duty and action, whether that duty be to my art or responsibilities as an employee or as a boyfriend, I believe she is driven much more by her emotions and empathy.  That is not to say that I lack emotions or that she lacks a sense of action or responsibility, but only that for each of us one is more primary and the other is more secondary in importance.

So, with her as the more emotional of the two of us the stress of the situation for her created a mess.  I've learned a bit better since we first got together how to handle these situations.  In the past I was usually at a total loss; I had no clue what I was supposed to do, and making suggestions about how to  fix things or how to handle events differently in the future (the only sensible thing in my mind) was met with cold annoyance about how I was insensitive and critical of her actions.  As it turns out, what an person with their own personality based in empathy wants is empathy in return.  In other words; if the individual is upset, shut up, nod a lot, agree with everything, and unless the thoughts are reaffirming don't share any thoughts or suggestions on the subject until the individual is no longer being emotional.  Remember that honesty is only the best policy if what you honestly think is what the other person wants to hear.

My Sister, Katy, stopped by today.  She is visiting from out of town with friends for a bachelorette party.  Mr. S. made comments to the nature of her being more boisterous than I am.  I think that around him I am more quiet than usual.  The fact is that I'm trying to be patient and polite.

Work today consisted of digging through antiquated records and other books, trying to find information about a specific Japanese artist who lived in France.  Mr. S wants the information about this artist because there is a painting hanging in his wife's office that he painted.  His wife, (we'll call her Mrs. S) does not want the painting sold.  I have no clue how they will work this out, but I suppose that is none of my business.  None-the-less, it is my job to research and write up information on artists, so onward I go with the search for info.

Found some information on the artist, Foussa Itaya, in a volume from the Benezit artists encyclopedia.  It is all in French.  Old dusty books are about to meet Google translate.