July 24

On Saturday, I slept in and woke up to Lina doing a deep cleanse of the house. Now that construction is finished messing with the stairwell, we mopped and vacuumed up all the dust. Vacuuming turned into a full on attack of spider webs and together, Lina and I went around the baseboards, corners, door frames and ceilings in every room. Then, because we moved the carpet to vacuum, we decided to rearrange the entire living room to make it more open. So, we moved furniture, dusted, wiped surfaces, etc. and now we feel like we have a fresh start on our home! Then, we walked to Rosalie for some lunch and ended up not having time to grocery shop before we had to get ready for the night's festivities.

We headed to Michael's friend's house for a Birthday BBQ for Rowena, one of the Irish girls. From there, we walked to SunCorp Stadium for the Rugby Match and afterward, followed the sports crowd to Caxton Street bars. I very much enjoy Rugby as a sport because the ball is always in play, so it's always exciting, it can get turned over at anytime, and because it's pretty rough - they get tackled with no padding, then get back up and run again! The Wallabies won, so it was a good game to see. We ended up at an Irish Pub, Kitty O'Sheas where the Irish girls sang Irish jigs. Then we went home around 3am by Taxi.



The Story of Roo-Poo:
While getting ready to go out, Michael mentioned he had a blow-up Kangaroo named RooPoo that has been around the world with him, including in France on Bastille Day last year. Jillian agreed to wear RooPoo on her back, if Michael wore the green and yellow Mullet wig! We get to the BBQ and Jillian discovered that RooPoo is wearing a bright yellow Mankini, so she promptly tries to renege on her deal, stating that if she had known about the Mankini prior, she would not have agreed. We insist that she keeps her end of the bargain, and I agree to blow up Senor RooPoo. Lina situates the Mankini properly and Michael tries to stuff the Mankini with actual sausages from the Barbie, but we tell him that has gone too far. She finally agrees to strap on the Marsupial and we head off to the stadium. Once at the stadium, the guards refuse to let us in and say that we have to give up K-Jizzle (Jillian's ghetto nickname for the Roo). We can't even bring him in deflated. So, we put him in their trusty hands and they give us a claim check ticket.
Once the game is over, we headed to the Info desk and tried to collect RooPoo, but they told us that RooPoo is no longer there. And older gentleman explained he had seen RooPoo, but that he was given away to some girl with long blonde hair. Michael was devastated and started calling people, telling them that his baby is gone! (Meanwhile, Lina and I suppressed "A dingo stole my baby" jokes) Jillian caused a scene, gave them the old Jewish guilt for giving RooPoo to the wrong people without a claim ticket. But, there wasn't much that could be done. So we headed to the bars and kept an eye out for RooPoo, vowing to jump the Roo-Nappers if we found them. At one point, in a crowd, I got on Lina's shoulders and scanned the crowd looking for our lost Roo, to no avail.