I'm done with my interview. It went well. I have a verbal offer, to be followed in a week or two by a written offer, unless the prof freaks out or something. Hopefully that will not happen, and hopefully I am not jinxing myself by writing it down.
I am a moron when it comes to salary discussions. The prof is equally inexperienced. When the prof told me he would make me an offer, he asked if the salary we had previously agreed upon was ok. Like a fool, I said it was. He then said he'd give me a raise if things went well (which he'd said before, which should've clued me in that I was leaving money on the table). We were both showing our cards. Oh well. He doesn't know that it's the same salary as I got at my old company.
Anyway, today I got to relax and see the area. A real estate agent showed me around and took me to a few houses. Naturally it was a lot cheaper than the Bay Area. She didn't take me to any of the super cute houses near campus, mainly because they didn't have garages or large yards, but I wish she did.
I saw a lot of houses painted green. The color scheme on my house would fit right in here. I also walked past the world's cutest purple house. I'll post a picture when I get home and can upload the pictures to my computer.
After that I wandered around all afternoon. First, I went over to Ithaca Commons, which is a pedestrian mall in the downtown area. There were a lot of cute shops, and some tacky ones too. I liked the mineral store. Unlike most stores of its ilk, this really was a mineral store, rather than a jewelry store with a few stones. I wandered into a crafts/jewelry store. I wasn't expecting much, but it was quite nice. I bought some earrings and cards. Then I had a slice of cheap pizza (chickaboli - bacon, chicken, pepperoni, and sausage....mm) and went back to my hotel to drop off my stuff.
I then wandered over towards Cornell. I was on a Bootquest(TM). My trip here made me realize that I was missing a key element in my wardrobe - the perfect pair of waterproof rubber soled lace up black boots. I normally have a pair, but they're very hard to find in California. I have to be very persistent, order them online, or try to buy them when I'm on the East Coast. I had compromised with a pair of brown boots, a pair of pseudo-UGGS, and several pairs of dressy black boots. I bought my dressy black boots for the interview and my brown boots for walking around, but they're not great for snow. Anyway, there was a shoe store on the way to Cornell. I walked in, saw a lot of cute black bots that met all my requirements, and ended up buying a very nice pair of boots. They were even marked down 30%. I used to have a very similar pair by the same brand, and I wore them to death. (I bought those on a trip to Boston.)
After I bought my boots, I continued on to Cornell. It was cold but I was nice and comfy warm, especially since I was walking uphill. I wandered around campus and took a lot of pictures and bought myself a Cornell fleece jacket. Yes I was feeling confident. That was stupid.
When I got back to my hotel, I chilled for a bit, wrote most of this blog post, and checked Facebook. On it, one of my former coworkers posted that the company had just sold their group to another company. Yep, that's the group that would make the equipment that we would buy for Cornell. Geez. Like my former company hasn't caused me enough headaches already. It wouldn't affect my offer (we did discuss the possibility of something like this happening in the short, mid, or long term) but it will sure confuse things.
I'm just glad I didn't know about this before my afternoon of retail therapy.
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