
Recent Entries

My favorite breakfast food on the weekends is scrambled eggs, but not the kind with bacon and sausage that you might get at a restaurant. I am talking about fancy scrambled eggs with all kinds of appetizing mix-ins. I love putting all kinds of vegetables and greens into this breakfast, and one of my favorite additions ever is potatoes – the kind that was boiled or baked the night before (or even microwaved that morning), cut into little pieces, and turned golden on the pan next to the eggs.
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I have a slight tea obsession. I love trying new teas and always having something great to choose from. The problem with that is that I end up with boxes upon boxes of tea, some of them having only a few tea bags left, but the giant box is still taking up a lot of room. Recently, I stopped buying tea so I could get my collection under control. I finished up a few flavors so I wouldn’t have several almost empty boxes laying around. I even tried (unsuccessfully) to throw some away, later convincing myself that I needed more variety in case guests didn’t like my favorites. The bin I was using for my tea boxes was still overflowing, so I needed a new plan.
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These little guys were my first experiment with a muffin tin that I finally bought myself. I have been wanting to get one for a while and always had a hard time justifying the purchase because I can do without it, but seeing so many cooking ideas lately that use muffin tins for main courses finally convinced me. So I decided to try something new.
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When I was in the market for a new car last fall, I wanted something small and gas efficient so that the long commute to work did not feel like such a money-sucking black hole. It would still be time-sucking, but at least I wanted to spend less at the gas pump, help the world, etc. I desperately wanted an electric car, but our life situation prevented that dream from becoming a reality.
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I am surprised I have not seen this anywhere during my search for the best place to mine tin in World of Warcraft. I have not tried this in the later versions, but this seems to be overlooked in Vanilla.
When I was finished with copper and needed tin to level up my mining skill, I was halted for a long time because it seemed like everywhere I went, tin was very rare. Then I found the Azurelode Mine in Hillsbrad Foothills and hit the alliance mining jackpot. All of the miners inside are alliance (this area is meant for horde leveling), so running around it farming tin and silver was insanely easy. The high respawn rates would work for horde too, but it’s definitely more difficult for them. This mine is amazing – just by running a certain pattern (it changes after a while), you can get crazy amounts of ore and very easy leveling without having to wait for nodes to respawn. I found the most in the pockets off the eastern tunnel, along the southern tunnel, and sometimes one on the second level in the middle tunnel. Most of the time, I just ran a backwards L pattern and would find a node along the way.

The Azurelode Mine in the Hillsbrad Foothills depicted with a red arrow
The map above shows the mine to the west of South Shore. The easiest way to get there is fly into South Shore (as alliance) and run west around the animals on the hills. Depending on your level, you might be able to run between them (just dismiss your pet if you have one) and not have to fight. As far as skill leveling goes, you can farm this mine until level 175. Tin stops being green maybe 20 skill points before that, but silver is green until 175. It will start taking longer because silver is more rare, but it’s actually surprisingly common in this mine.
Happy mining!