Oh man, today may be my Develop-Serious-Cojones day.

I spoke to the lawyer about the lease and she said my landlady can't have it both ways -- kick me out of the house and still hold me responsible for paying rent for an empty house. She said no judge would agree to it. Luckily I have a text message where my landlady suggested my moving out (else it would just have been a phone call that won't hold up in court) -- not directly but basically saying the house needs to be available early Aug.

And, that her advertising it for a higher price shows that she's actually not making reasonable efforts to find a tenant and is just being greedy.

And, also that no judge would order me to pay the entire year's worth of rent money while not occupying the house, even if it came to it.

So, she gave me some advice on what to email my landlady -- did it and also added mail tracking to make sure she gets it (h/t ATAT for the mail-tracking idea).

I told her I'm totally okay with giving up this one month's rent and my security deposit (another month's rent) and may be even a month or two more but just don't want to be held responsible for the whole year.

And, now am sitting around waiting for my landlady's response -- to be even more crafty, I took a screenshot of the ad she's placed with the higher rent.

Apart from that, a young kid who I sorta kinda manage (overseas) called me today to tell me that she has another offer as well and wants to get the heck out because life will be hellish for her once I leave -- apparently, just my presence as managing the project has served to buffer her a bit (although there's even less work-life balance for her unfortunately, since she is in the cheap-overseas-labor market) and she's worried that it'll get way worse.

I advised her to get the heck out as soon as possible and she asked me to back her up as she makes her case tomorrow (it seems there's all sorts of pressure on them when they do try to quit) -- I told her, yep, sure and I also went ahead and sent a stinker to the powers that be (including my boss) on how the firm should be doing better and people are being asked to work crazy hours to compensate for the failures stemming from cheap-arse tech infrastructure and everyone's totally burnt out.

Ahhhh....