Orderinny

Its official... I am the size of a pregnant whale. Ever since Ruoying moved in for the summer two weeks ago, I have steadily been piling on the pounds... soon, I'll need a new wardrobe. Good thing summer sales are around the corner...
I was in Baltimore for 3 days on a conference and in 3 days i visited cheesecake factory twice... and of course loaded myself with a thick slice of cheesecake each time. I adore cheesecake factory! I know.... its a chain, quite like the applebees and olive gardens of the world... But it held good memories for me as a student, where it was our source for good bread, huge basins of pasta and the designated birthday cake supplier back in Chicago. I would say really good things about the place to my family and by the time Ruoying visited Chicago shortly after starting her freshman year, she had given such glowing reports of the restaurant that every family and friend were demanding to be brought there for lunch/dinner/cheesecake break... My sisters and cousins are equally enamored by the place and for our blowout Jay Chou/West Coast/Winter Break holiday, I remembered me choosing to stay where we were in San Francisco based on its proximity to the CAKE (tt's cheesecake factory's ticker! yah yah I'm a nerd) and I also remember us jumping around gleefully but unglamorously in the San Francisco branch, when our beeper finally started vibrating, signalling that after waiting for 90 minutes, there was finally a table open for the 5 of us. We had even bought a whole 7" strawberry cheesecake (349038475 calories) and dug our way through with 5 plastic forks in record time... fun memories those were, although my younger siblings and cousins probably had much higher metabolism rates than i had... sigh... Anyway, I was too disgusted by my lack of self-discipline in Baltimore to even take pictures and remind myself that I actually inhaled about 2000 calories with 2 teeny pieces of cake...
Besides that, I had an utterly unmemorable crabcake salad in a restaurant called J Paul's on Baltimore's inner harbor... Good view of the harbor, but you know what they say about the negative correlation between views and meal satisfaction... Despite not being a fan of crusteceans, I had to order crabcakes, they being Baltimore's proudest invention and contribution to the world... The salad was really not bad, the bibb lettuce was crunchy, but the salad dressing was probably storebought. And the crabcake... I dont think i've eaten enough to judge, but i guess it was fine, but again,I should have listened to my inner gourmet voice and gotten a burger instead.

Better luck next time, if I ever do head back to Baltimore again... Can the next conference be in Chicago please? I'll like some steak and a good slice of deep-dish pizza, thank you very much =)