Friday, July 6, 2018

i didn't really sleep this week, as i had a lot of video editing and journal compiling to do. i tried to get up around midnight, but i really actually mostly just slept for the last 12+ hours - a needed and very much wanted sleep. i'm up now and ready to start a new day...

the temperature fell sharply over night and it's actually quite nice, right now. i like the heat & humidity, but i was developing a mild rash from exposure to it and did need a bit of a break from it. it's actually going to be a bit cold this weekend, and balance out to "seasonal" again for next week.

today, i need to look at listings. tonight, i'm going to clean a little. i'm going to have more flexibility this month, at least until the ruling comes in the mail, but the basic situation hasn't changed - i still need to save money to plan for the move.

the lease is done on sept 30th, so i need to be out by october 1st at the latest. i'm confident that i can do this, and that it should prevent me from needing to compromise too badly - i think this should be enough time to get what i want.

i think my arguments went over well, but it's not clear what kind of damages i'm going to get. i think i probably got moving costs, or some abstraction of it. i'm not going to get cleaning costs, but i might get an abstraction of it in pro-ration. i don't expect costs for furniture or dry-cleaning - and knew that would be almost impossible to get. that was meant almost solely as leverage for mediation; i didn't actually intend to go to trial.

the big wildcard is that pro-ration. if i'm here for ten months, that's $7000 paid in rent. i asked the court to determine a percentage, because i claimed i couldn't quantify that kind of hardship - but what i was really worried about was lowballing myself. i would have asked for something in the 10%-25% range. but, i know this judge is very sympathetic to non-smokers. if i asked for 60% and that was too much, she could have kibboshed it; if i asked for 25%, i could have been missing out on an opportunity for 40%. so, i instead left it at the court's discretion to determine a percentage - under the expectation that such a percentage is going to be higher than any guess i could have made. it's a sneaky algorithm to optimize my return. 30% is over $2000; 10% is a month's worth of rent. but, it relies on the judge not seeing through my ruse - or at least being sympathetic to it. i mean, i volunteer that it's manipulative, sure, but it's not so terrible, is it? is the judge not best qualified to figure this out? am i not putting myself at a threat of lowballing myself by presenting a percentage, or harming myself by appearing too greedy?

we'll know in a few weeks.

for now, i'm glad that there's some certainty about things...and eager to get things back in order.

the time spent preparing was not wasted: i've now sorted through vlog data from most of the last six months, which i needed to do anyways. i should be back to rebuilding from 2014 on within 24 hours.