A Complexity Proposal

Tonight I fly off to Paris for the 24th IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity, the namesake conference of the blog. If the plane arrives on time I should just make it for my paper's presentation (which will be given by Ryan Williams in any case).

I (along with Eric Allender) will have attended all 24 conferences. I have had several papers in the conference, served on the PC including once as chair and a six-year stint as conference chair. But my most important Complexity Conference event had little to do with any of the above. 

Twenty years ago, I attended the 1989 Structures Conference (as it was called back then) at the University of Oregon between grad school and my first job at the University of Chicago. The outing consisted of a rafting trip and I landed in a raft with Toda and Razborov. Glad we didn't capsize.

But the moment came when I found a florist in Eugene. I sent a dozen red roses to my then girlfriend Marcy's work place back in Boston with a card that said "Will you marry me?"

We've been married nearly nineteen years.