Since reading Dan Sinker's post about Lego's new toys for girls, and blogging briefly myself a few weeks ago, I've been reading whatever comes along about Lego and gender. The most interesting piece to arrive has been Business Week on Lego's human-centered design.

During ’05 and ’06, the Lego “anthros,” as the research teams have been called, discovered some underappreciated cultural gaps. The idea of creative play as conducive to learning, or even formal education, is an article of faith at Lego that goes back to its founder, who defended his decision to become a toymaker during the Great Depression by pointing out that all animals use play to develop their brains. In Japan, however, Lego found that study and play were more clearly delineated. Few Japanese parents bought Lego, as they do in Germany or the U.S., because they were “toys with vitamins in them,” as Lego senior director Søren Holm only half-jokingly puts it.

American boys, meanwhile, turned out to be the least free of any group Lego tracked. British and German boys are far more likely to play unsupervised in yards and wooded areas and even have greater latitude in decorating their bedroom walls. Among slightly older American boys, 9 to 12, building with Lego represented a rare chance to be left alone. (On one subject, boys of all ages and nationalities agreed: A castle without a dragon is worse than no castle at all.)

Lego won’t say how much it spent on its anthropology, but research went on for months and shattered many of the assumptions that had led the company astray. You could say a worn-out sneaker saved Lego. “We asked an 11-year-old German boy, ‘what is your favorite possession?’ And he pointed to his shoes. But it wasn’t the brand of shoe that made them special,” says Holm, who heads up the Lego Concept Lab, its internal skunkworks. “When we asked him why these were so important to him, he showed us how they were worn on the side and bottom, and explained that his friends could tell from how they were worn down that he had mastered a certain style of riding, even a specific trick.”

Very cool research and very smart. But there are right and wrong lessons to draw from human-centered research. An op-ed over the weekend in the New York Times raises that concern with Lego.

Over the holidays, cleaning up, I found there were many photos, papers and Web notes around my house of things I meant to blog but for some reason never did. To clean house in 2012, time to blog! Part three of five.

Here are 10 poems I meant to blog but never did.

1. "The Fatalist: Time is filled with beginners. You are right. Now." By Lyn Hejinian. There's a lovely last line about "a poem full of ruptures."

2. "At Pleasure Bay." By Robert Pinsky. One he read when I saw him last year. The work starts historical before turning personal and rich.

3. "The Enigma of the Infinitesimal." By Mark Strand. When he writes about "lovers of the in-between," I find myself in that category often.

4. "Expecting." By Kevin Young. Beautiful.

5. "A Small Story About the Sky." By Albert Rios. The lines are so short, and the images are so bright. The final line stuck with me for days.

6. "Changing Genres." By Dean Young. So good. "I was satisfied with haiku until I met you, / jar of octopus, cuckoo's cry, 5-7-5, / but now I want a Russian novel, / a 50-page description of you sleeping…"

7. "One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII." By Pablo Neruda. So good, in a so different way. "I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, / or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: / I love you as one loves certain obscure things, / secretly, between the shadow and the soul."

8. "The Instruction Manual." By John Ashbery. No one writes poetry for digital CMS product managers, but this Ashbery poem comes close.

9. "Boy Breaking Glass." By Gwendolyn Brooks. About urban youth and urban destruction but working for the lost, destructive rebel in all of us.

10. "Daisies." By Mary Oliver. I blogged about the poem initially seven years ago, and life pushed me back upon it in 2011. I got it this time.

Over the holidays, cleaning up, I found there were many photos, papers and Web notes around my house of things I meant to blog but for some reason never did. To clean house in 2012, time to blog! Part two of five.

Here are four fun theater nights I meant to blog but never did.

1. Lungs, at the Studio Theatre, with my friend Annie. When not busy being a doctor, Annie is a key source for myself and her other friends about what D.C. theater production will surprise you. Lungs surprised me. It was a man and a woman, M and W, on an empty wood stage.

"In all their hip, unmarried, consciously unconscious stylishness," the Post take said, "M and W begin a halting, circuitous dialogue, rife with muddled thoughts, complaints, rants, digs and apologies, as they try to figure out what each really wants, separately and together." And I love the adjective in the next line: "Their musings form a kind of word-cloud portrait of that contemporary romantic malady: ambivalence."

2. Oklahoma, at Arena Stage, with a visiting Lindsay. I had never seen the musical in any form before — live, MGM movie or school production. Lindsay, coming off five years in alternative theater and seven months in urban Cambodia, was even more skeptical. But the staging won us over, possibly within the first minutes. The performances were strong, and the style well adapted for in-the-round theater. The modern-dance darkness of the dream sequence blew me away. The ending came too quickly, a flaw in the script, but I liked how I felt so invested in things.

3. Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, at Woolly Mammoth. My favorite play names from the 30-in-60-minutes session: "Neo-Future Faulkner, or a tale re-told by an idiot," "The Song of All the Spanish I Remember," "forehand backhand dropshot volley volley overhead," "…and if you gaze into the salad, the salad gazes also into you," and "Neo-Futurist Trick Shootin,' " which was when they shot water at us.

4. The performance Jonny and I would have given at Jeff's rehearsal dinner had we enough time to write the lyrics and make the costumes. Even if the minutes just before our speeches, Jonny was suggesting toilet paper as a prop. With more time, we could have won a Tony.

Over the holidays, cleaning up, I found there were many photos, papers and Web notes around my house of things I meant to blog but for some reason never did. To clean house in 2012, time to blog! Part one of five.

First up — 30 interesting meals I somehow never blogged about. Not all of the big meals out. Just ones that were different somehow. I'm going to cheat a bit and start with Sunday's because it was delicious.

1. New Year's Day brunch with Lori at The Chesapeake Room, on 8th Street. We wanted no more champagne. Eggs, potatoes, fruit worked.

2. Brought cannoli when friends Becky and Kyle invited me and Lori to holiday dinner. How I missed photographing Becky's amazing-tasting and -looking pumpkin gnocchi, I don't know, but I blame the usual — being too distracted by the prospect of eating to pull out a camera.

Good thing Becky got a photo on Instagram, though. Magazine-ready.

3. Honey Pig with Lori to celebrate a project's end. But mainly to eat.

Earlier in the year, friends Laura and Carolyn introduced me to it.

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Forgive me. It has been more than a year since my last Hell Burger. To make up for my great burger failing, I went big during last week's visit.

1. October 2008. Burger of Seville.
2. September 2009. Regular mushroom-and-swiss burger.
3. January 2010. Soul Burger Number One.
4. February 2010. The Dog Catcher.
5. September 2010. B.I.G. Poppa.
6. December 2011. Fat Joe.

Yes, the Fat Joe. "Seared Foie Gras with a Balsamic Glaze, White Truffle Oil, Crispy Shallots, Vine-Ripened Tomato." The burger was somewhat reminiscent of the late Burger of Seville, from my first visit, which had seared foie gras, sauteed mushrooms, bordelaise sauce and truffle oil.

With Fat Joe, the shallots and tomato made for a lighter experience. I wasn't sure whether I ordered the right size or not, though. Since my last trip, Ray's added "Big Devil" and "Little Devil" sizes. I don't recall which size they used to give to everyone. I got the Little Devil, a third-pounder, which was plenty big, but I wasn't sure it was big enough.

Burgers I have yet to try on the list: The Mack, The New Jack Zing, Big Punisher, and Grilled Vegetable Stack. Zing is spicy, and Big Punisher's even more so. Lori, who loves spice, didn't beat the Zing without her eyes watering. These burgers scare me. But one day they too will fall.

My dad sent me the recent WSJ story, "New York Baby Names: Parents Stick With Jayden, Isabella." Dad's sole comment? "Only 75 Patricks."

Yes, it was more bad news for babies named Patrick. My first name had held steady this year when the Social Security Administration released its statistics: 129th place among boys. And as we knew, for Patrick as a first name, steady was the new up. NameVoyager told a sad story:

As bad, Cooper as a first name rose again, from 84th to 76th. I had nothing against people named Cooper, except in relation to Patrick:

With the new year arriving, I had high hopes for Patrick babies in '12. But this new data from NYC revealed deep trouble in U.S. metros. My name tumbled from 116th place in 2009 to 138th place in 2010. I tied with Shlomo. In 2010, there were 75 new babies named Patrick and 75 new babies named Shlomo. In contrast, at the top of the '10 list, there were 817 Jaydens (not counting the 215 Jadens and 94 Jaidens) and 745 Ethans. Patrick was also beaten by, among others: Aiden, Lucas, Tristan, Oliver, Menachem, Chase, Luca, Leonardo, Erick, and Yehuda.

Elsewhere, Mohamed tied Muhammed, finishing just ahead of Jesus.

I don't want to have to take things into my own hands. I don't want to make the name Patrick famous, cool and admirable by doing awesome public things. But I guess that's what I'm going to have to do in 2012.

The Poetry Foundation's daily feed has met the coming of the new year well, running quality work about the advancing calendar. Among them, I like "New Year" by Bei Dao — "a child carrying flowers walks toward the new year / a conductor tattooing darkness / listens to the shortest pause" — but I love "One Day" by Robert Creeley. Poem in its entirety:

One day after another—
Perfect.
They all fit.

I saw this sign at the gas station the other day and loved it. The sign was small but perfect. This last year for me, while there were a couple leaps, was about the small things. About balance, about steps, about a more sober, mediated, hopeful outlook on everything expected and unexpected. Even the bigger moves consisted of these smaller pieces.

I found the approach had issues and failings, and it was more boring at times. But it felt healthy and happy. While I've ended many recent years dissatisfied, I couldn't say that about the last couple. They were the happiest, healthiest yet, slowly moving ahead, figuring more out.

This year, though, as any, has left much still to figure. Onward! 2012!

I love a nice trend in my WordPress comment spam. The Akismet plug-in does a good job of keeping the spam off the site, but I get a couple dozen messages in the holding queue, behind the scenes, each week.

Sometimes the trend is in language, like Russian. Sometimes an Asian spam house will manually enter promotions for sketchy Internet-only plumbing or car parts. But sometimes the trend is unexpected. Today, as I catch up after a few days away, I'm happy to see what's arrived.

Encouragement! Good cheer! None of the spams promotes a company in the username, email address, site, or comment. Instead, I'm seeing common names, random email addresses, no promoted websites, and comments consisting only of attaboys. Which is nice. I'm guessing the occasional misspellings and odd phrasings are cues for serious spam engines, to see where they might get their content onto sites easily.

If that's true, publishing their text in a post might be a poor decision. But on the mend today, I like the happiness. They hit the spot. Below are the 11 spams I received this week, counting down to my favorite.

Drumroll…

11. "Thanks alot – your answer solved all my pobrlems after several days struggling."

10. "In the complicated world we live in, it's good to find siplme solutions."

9. "AKAIK [as far as I know, sort of] you've got the awnser in one!"

8. "BION [believe it or not] I'm impersesd! Cool post!"

7. "You got to push it-this essenital info that is!"

6. "Visited your blog post through Digg. You already know I am signing up to your rss feed."

5. "Appreciation for this infmortaoin is over 9000-thank you!"

4. "I'm not quite sure how to say this; you made it exrteemly easy for me!"

3. "Pin my tail and call me a doenky, that really helped."

2. "If my problem was a Death Star, this article is a photon treopdo."

1. "You put the lime in the coocunt and drink the article up."

Back in the blogging saddle here.

A month ago, I got a cold. Then, as the cold left, The Cough returned and didn't let go. The Cough ran my life until Christmas weekend when a new cold struck with a vengeance. The two forces teamed up to kick my butt and, a few times a day, leave me short of air. After trying lots of regimens of sinus then cold then cough meds, I gave up and went to the doctor. "Asthma!" he said. He gave me a trio of meds, and I felt better within hours of trying them. Going-out-to-dinner good. For the first time in a month, I felt like me again. I could exclaim, talk long, talk short, laugh, emote, without worrying about the effects. It was great.

Of course, I couldn't sleep. Medicines designed to shock and blow out the pipes in your head are no drowsers. I couldn't sleep for most of the next couple days. I spent the end of the week working at home.

After taking off the beginning of it, my first sick days in a couple years, that was good enough for me. Not that my subconscious enjoyed it. I like being in the office. What little sleep I did get featured two terrific, movie-worthy nightmares about work. I wish I could remember more about them. They would have made quality adds to this blog's Dreams About Work. But anyway. My sleep finally got back on track last night. The Cough is gone, and only a little cold remains. I'm drinking a mango vitamin drink as I blog to further destroy it. Victory/life is within reach.