Thursday- the biiiiiiiiiiiiiiig day! Hadnt been feelin it at all cause this unemp has gotten me to my very core. Woke up and had breakfast wit the fam, got that load of dishes ran and got all garbage and recycle curbside for the garbage man to get. No sooner had i did that i looked down..... HALF of a rat was layin there on the cement in front of my pick up truck. EWWWWWWWW. and you know how i do it! sho nuff did went and got the camera and snapped pics of that bad boy lmao! Half of it waist and down was there, one organ was layin next to it severed and no upper chest nor head was present. What caused that devistation is beyond me but i sure hope it brushed its teeth! Checked the mail and got Fife's official letter of rejection which didnt bother me. I was soooooo over the whole situation but glad i got it then so i could do away wit it and not find it in the mail when we returned makin me re-live it all over again. The in-law eventually arrived to swoop up our chidlins and we headed out to my parents gettin there just as they were ready to pull off. Stopped by tha Cane cause i forgot my swimming trunks aboard from the last time i got to take her out and some allergy meds cause my butt was sneezin like crazy! Forgot the sunblock aboard though and needed that! Got to Masterpark unloaded the luggage caught the shuttle to seatac checked our bags, declared my 9mm in my luggage had that checked (you know good and well my 9 is like an american express... you NEVER leave home without it!) and headed to the terminal. Got aboard after 30min and we took to the friendly skies! The gurls sat together and me and my dad sat together read some mags and chit-chatted abit along the 2.5hr flight. I offered up my ipod to'em since i wasnt usin it and he ended up watchin some of 'BLACK SNAKE MOAN' w/samuel l jackson.

We landed and got our bags and after a brief wait cause my mom forgot some of our itinerary and boarding passes on the plane... we went over to the MGM check-in booth they had in the airport. Purchased tickets for the Cirque Du Soleil for the 4th of July and went outside to get a shuttle... or so i thought. Book of Lon readers... WE DID IT BIG. you hear me??? We rented a LIMO! hahhahaha Oh i was feelin like Peppermint Pimp'n for real! Wifey as she entered accidentally brushed against one of the glasses gettin in which shattered after it fell and caused superfiscial scratches on her leg. Felt bad for her. But we sho nuff did leave the airport came down Tropicana Av and pulled up to the MGM like superstars! Got our room 8-205 and came up here and the magic just didnt stop. IT WAS A SUITE!!! King size bed wit a window that is separated from the sitting area by an armoir that has double door openings on BOTH sides. So you can lay in bed and watch tv or swivel the tv and watch it from the couch or chairs in the sitting area!!! has a mini bar area w/a refrig and a HUGE bathroom wit double sinks, bathtub separate from the shower... it is NUTS!!!. perfect view of the stratosphere, and planet hollywood casino they buildin as well as other places. We left the room and went back down to the lobby where we all ate at Wolfgang Pucks restaurant where we all basically shared off each others plates to have a sampler platter of steak, spaghetti, italian sausage pizza, and my huge burger and fries! From there Kelitha was tired, and my parents were ready to gamble and i wasnt tryin to just have all this food on gut, so i took wifey back to the room where she was mopey and moody cause i wouldnt stay in the room wit'er. I was like gurl please i been caged up in the house for 5 months you think im gonna fly down to vegas and just stay in a room again?! hecks to tha naw! peace! Grabbed my tennis shoes, used the bathroom, grabbed the camcorder and that thang and i hit the strip you hear me?! Called up my gurl Cake, Lucy, and Locks to holla at'em while i wasnt recordin. Wanted to call my gurl Marie but i figured she'd long been in bed so thought i'd try the next day. I head uptown on foot resettin my pedometer at the room door and walked while recordin. I was on the phone with Lucy for a moment and had been recordin when i felt someone ticklin me. I thought my parents had caught up or someone i had known recognized me. I turn around.... its these 2 blonde bombshell gurls in short mini-dresses just a chucklin away at me. I smile back and whisper to Lucy what had just happened then turn the camcorder on'em to record the one who had just accosted me not even 10min after hittin the strip lol. She says to the camera "yeah im the one that just tickled you, and i dont regret it!" lol I end up walkin up the the Venetian, talk to Locks there for awhile then head back down toward walgreens where im freakin hot and thirsty so i buy a case of water and a liter of coke (cause my dad said he had bought some courvessier so i was like heeecks yeah! we can mix our dranks and order up the UFC fight on saturday!) lugged that by myself back to the resort up the elevator and back to the room total was 2.3miles and a total of 4900 steps! I felt VERY good about it and the burning off of at least 200 calories (all this info according to my pedometer). Split the case of water wit my parents and came in my room to upload the video footage to the laptop and type of this fabulous installment of the book of lon! tty tmrw!

Friday- Forgive me if i say somethin a lil off the wall but my a** is DRUNK right now hahahahaha had 2 MGD's on the strip and only ate 1x today so im feelin it like a muh right now! Tryin to recap from today, I woke up round 7ish the sun was beamin bright by then. Jumped in the shower which was refreshin and hopped back out. Wifey was up soon after so she got all freshened up. Went into a brief stall pattern cause neither of us knew what to do. So we read our individual books for a while havin a lil quiet time. Finally we decided we were gonna walk up the block to Denny's for breakfast and txt my parents across the way that was our intentions. My mom then advised us to order room service in our room so we said hey! why not! Got a deluxe breakfast and it was HUGE. Now when i say huge i am NOT lyin to you when i said thats all i ate ALL day. Me and wifey both we were so full. now THATS a breakfast! Immediately after we finished we txt my parents again to advise that we out! So we crossed the street over to the Tropicana and went to the Bodies exhibit. It was INCREDIABLE. i recommend that exhibit to EVERYONE. It was in seattle last year and we had missed it so we opted to see it down here and it was totally worth it. The lowest point of the exhibit was the babies. They had a special section where it showed conjoined twins as well as a baby who's organs were developed on the exterior of the body. Then the one that hit hard was the fetus's at various stages of development. 3wks, 4wks, it literally had a real baby at each weekly stage. It was sad on 2 fronts. the 1st, was the tragedy of miscarriage and remembering that we had lost our 1st child to a miscarriage (1st and 3rd, Tamia and Marcus are ou 2nd and 4th children). The 2nd was actually what made me angry and its the people that sit there and justify it in their feeble minds that only at a "certain stage" its really a baby so they can justify in their minds havin an abortion cause they couldnt keep they legs closed. THOSE people really need to see the exhibit to face reality of their actions and stare down in the FACE what they just murdered. It was CRAZY seein the real body's so close you could smell'em i you wanted to. Seein a cancer infested lung, a brain that suffered stroke, you name it. You could even touch a real preserved brain, liver, and intestine! Kelitha didnt want to at 1st and was pretty grossed out but in forced her to before we left lol. One exhibit i was just so fascinated because it really showed the human penis and testicles (lil funny side note as im typin this im still drunk and didnt remember the real term for "nuts" had to ask wifey lol). And the anus too! who wouldve thought the muscle really looked like that! After leavin that touching exhibit we emerged briefly and was flagged down by an African American employee for the next exhibit the Titanic. He asked us if we were goin in and when. We told'em takin a break then dippin back in. We went up the stairs back to the Tropicana's casino level and waited a few minutes for my parents who arrived. They went down and saw the Bodies exhibit and we went the other direction into the Titanic exhibit. That was pretty interesting seein all the artifacts recovered from the doomed ship. They build recreations of certain parts of the boat like the staircase, what it was like bein outside on deck, they even had a real iceberg in the exhibit!!! Toward the end you approached a wall showing all the survivors and deceased aboard the titanic. The African American guy had given us 2 deck pass cards at the beginning so we were to look up who we had and he gave me the card of the ONLY African American family aboard the Titanic. My card's wife and 2 kids survived, and my guy died :(

We emerged from the exhibit and gambled a lil on a video blackjack machine where i lost the full $20 my dad gave me to gamble wit lol. Stupid Vegas i aint gamblin anymore! Me and wife came back to the rooms to regroup momentarily and my parents stayed downstairs to grab a bite to eat. We went back downstairs and loitered around before comin back up AGAIN to the room. Waited a few then it was time for the Cirque Du Soleli show inside the MGM. It was AMAZING you hear me? FASCINATING. We were all glued to it. Afterward we emerged just BUZZIN about it my mom went over to Starbucks to get some more coffee and the 3 of us loitered on the outskirts of the store laughin and crackin jokes at my mom bein a coffee fiend. Crackin jokes on her soooo bad cause she had 2 cups! One a hot drink another cold. Kelitha says "Well looka there. Tryin to balance it out! One hot, one cold! Next thing you know my mom walks over to us and askin us what we laughin about cause she's got 2 drinks and she hands the cold one to Kelitha. Me and my dad are in TEARS laughin cause suddenly her whooooole mood changed and she was so thankful and me and my dad start crackin on her about how she was over wit us talkin all that smack clownin wit us now changin her tune! hahhahhahahahaha It was so funny! Afterward we crossed over the aisle and brought tickets for David Copperfield's show the following day. I was soooo excited! This Vegas trip is one for the books i just cant believe how exciting its been! We split up cause my parents were goin to check the time of the fireworks and I told Kelitha I wanted to walk back up the strip to get more Las Vegas 4th of July Mardi Gras style beads as souvenirs. We head uptown on foot and it is SLAMMED. people EVERYWHERE. We get up there and Kelitha is just tickled readin all the custom t-shirts. My contact dude spots me again and comes over to say whaddup and lemme know the beads today were 12 for $5.00. I said why didnt you tell me that yesterday?! (I had brought 5 for $5.00 the previous day) So i end up buyin 2 dozen beads and we stop by a grocery store and buy a 12pk of MGD. I crack one open at the store and Kelitha cracks one too and we start walkin back to the MGM. By the time we got there my 1st beer was GONE. We got back into the room and unloaded all the unncessary I grabbed a 2nd beer (as did Kelitha), went to my parents room and gave them some beers and grabbed my mom and headed back outside to drink and wait for the fireworks. My dad was in the shower so he stayed behind. I was already feelin the buzz cause we hadn't ate since breakfast and was still feelin full after all that walkin! I get my strap ID and all i need and we go sit outside in front of the MGM with the crowd and drink. Camcord, and drink waitin till 1030 when it was supposed to start 1040 comes and still nothin so i google on my blackberry Mandalay Bay where the fireworks were supposed to be at and ask'em what the deal?! They say they had already did'em at 1030! We were like WTF?! We'd been outside since 1000 and nothin in the skyline! So we broke out and walked over the the Blvd and crossed over to New York New York after briefly chucklin wit my mom about my sprint i had made across those very skybridges in 2004 bein drunk and needin to pee but not knowin where the bathrooms were in the MGM so was runnin back to the Luxor lol! We did a full round around NY NY peepin it out and there i finished my 2nd MGD. LIT! stumblin but keepin composure. We cross back over to the MGM and watch the bartenders at the bar "Centrifudge" do a Coyote Ugly style dance on top of the bar. Headed back up to the room at midnight where it was too late to be eatin and im still full of alcohol typin this out! 1240am now, need to shower i smell of booze and cigarettes. In the end, pedometer says walked a total of 5.5 miles and burned 447 calories... now how many calories did i DRINK with 2 MGD's? lol HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Saturday- The last real day here in hot sunny viva las vegas! We got up and ordered breakfast in room. Quiet morning, we had the tv off and just conversated together and joked a lil bit. Afterward sat on the couch and watched some tv for awhile and i laid my head in her lap while she watched some dumb show on BET called Baldwin Hills. Its basically the black answer back to MTV's The hills. I ended up nappin a lil bit then awoke and.... well... thats grown folks bitness ;) Got all back together and met up wit my parents and went on downstairs where they ate but i wasnt feelin it. Still full off my big breakfast again. Wifey and I went to the Cirque du soleli store and brought our kids a couple stuffed animal characters of two of the animals one adaptation of the play. I took those back up to the room and made a few quick phonecalls before regroupin wit the fam. We boarded the monorail @ $11.00 per ticket (one day pass)and headed north up to the Hilton. Got off and went inside and dinked around the outskirts of the star trek experience which had my dad intrigued i know lol. We went outside cause the goal was to get to the Hilton's residential guest suites they have... like a timeshare deal. Apparently i didnt know but my parents bought into it and thats where they were when they had went to Hawaii recently. So they wanted to check the Vegas one out. Well we went from the Hilton, walked down the street to the Sahara and staged there briefly due to the 107 degree weather. We were sittin in the guest arrival turnabout when we hear this roar that grew louder and louder.. we didnt know what it was but it sounded literally like a fighter jet so i hit record on my camcorder cause if it was a terrorist attack ive got the EXCLUSIVE and was bout to shop that footage! We look up and its a rollercoaster directly above us that we hadnt noticed before lol! We sat there and watched it in amazement as it roared up to a vertical pole...stopped.. then reversed backwards. Heeeeck naw! We continued on finally reachin the resort and did a tour of a couple of the penthouse condos which was absolutely CRAZY! Pushed on f/there walkin past the Riveria back to the Hilton and catchin the monorail back to the MGM. After gettin off we were walkin past and ponderin whether to just give away our passes i said im SELLIN mine lol. $11 was the buy price i was gonna sell it for $6. Within 1 minute i had sold mine and my dad seein my success i took his and the gurls left holdin theirs i snagged'em all and had'em all sold within 4minutes lol $44 spend $24 recovered. Your boy's a HUSTLA and dont you forget it. Had my parents impressed on my savvy skills (and of course i returned all the money to them w/out even pondering because they've paid our way through this whole trip). It was time to eat (bout late 5ish now)so me and wifey grabbed some chinese, afterward we went back to our rooms to stage till the David Copperfield show started.

Once it was time we emerged again f/our rooms and headed down gettin seated at a private table and i must admit, NOT a bad seat in the house really. We were all absolutely amazed at this guy's skill. Copperfield is the TRUTH. I saw some ish that i would suspect some voodoo blackmagic ish makin whole 1940's lincoln's appear and stuff you kiddin me?! Comin from an empty box and bein on stage inside that box on a motorcycle?! We were bedazzled and took some pictures at the show and collected'em after the show. Went back up to our rooms i was feelin a lil sleepy i think cause of the smoke and the drink i had inside the show. I googled and did anything i could to get the play by play of the UFC fight that we were forced to miss. I called down to the front desk earlier in the day and asked why we werent able to order the UFC 86 fight on PPV they advised that basically Mandalay Bay held a monopoly on the show that none other were authorized to broadcast. So you either purchased a ticket or Mandalay offered a closed circuit broadcast in their ballroom for $50/person. So i found a website that gave the play by play after each round and found it as round 5 was ongoing. Read aloud rounds 1-4 to Kelitha and waited for round five to read in disappointment Jackson, the guy i was bettin on lost his title to Griffin. So me and wifey laid in the bed and kicked back 2 millers we still had to try to knock'em out before Sunday when we get back on the plane. Got back up as she was sleepy to type up this installment of the Book of Lon and caught the news where they had some footage of the fight where f/what i saw (the highlights) im wonderin what im missin that he lost that fight. ah well. Back to bein a Washitonian in a few hours. See ya'll soon! And since this is the last installment till next week, Viva Las Vegas! I needed this trip sooooo bad. The depression was eatin away at me and not bein able to fully enjoy myself due to extreme budgeting, seein how my parents were so successful in their lives comin from NOTHIN in Mississippi it truly inspired me to step my game up and get on the good foot and make somethin outta myself bouncin back from this dark chapter in my life. I WILL be successful in Jesus name. I will be the ol' Lonnie Lon again with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step. Total walkin today? 5.4 miles, 440 calories burned.

Sunday- Ahhhh.... woke up a lil somber cause it was the big day.  Time to head on back to reality and conclude the weekend getaway.  We ordered our breakfast via room service and decided to go downstairs to the MGM store while we waited or our food to get some authentic MGM retired gambling cards.  We decided we were gonna collect cards f/actual casinos we stay in when we go down there, so we decided to head across the street and down the blvd to the Luxor to go collect those retired cards as well.  Just as we were at the Tropicana walkin southbound my dad called advisin room service was knockin on our door tryin to deliver our food! lol ooops!  So he took it in his room for us and we proceeded back to the Luxor.  We saw Criss Angel's OCC motorcycle thats on display inside which was pretty cool.  Grabbed those cards and headed back to MGM gettin there and ate our final breakfast.  I had all my stuff packed up the night before so there was no scramblin to get packed just add the last minute touches that was used that a.m.  We did a lil bag shufflin cause of the souvenirs that weighed down my bag a lot.  (yeah ya'll aint gonna cost me another $50 in overweight fees!)  We watched a lil tv and talked awhile before my parents gave the call that it was time to go.  Grabbin all the bags and headin out the door, I last second decided to empty as much as the fridge as possible.  We had 5 bottled waters left and 2 MGD's (out of 12. my parents had 4 we had 8 total.  i consumed 3, Kelitha 3, and 2 left)  couldnt leave the beer! so i packed the 2 MGD's and distributed 3 bottles of water out and left 2 bottles in the fridge.  Said goodbye to the room and proceeded downstairs to check out.  Hailed a Limo to take us back to the airport (pimpin aint easy!) Got the bags checked in and when through the scanners no prob and proceeded to the gate an hour early. Toward takeoff time they advised the were overbooked and offered an incentive of $200 and another ticket, but the catch was no other flights out that day you'd have to let them put you up in a hotel 1 night and flyout tmrw.  We all were initially down if it was a delayed flight out later that day but not leavin tmrw! so we boarded the Southwest plane and took to the skies.  No sooner did we get off the ground we ran into some HORRIBLE turbulence that shook the plane pretty violently and concerned everyone.  Weird cause not a cloud in the sky nor wind.  We headed southwest in direction and i traced the freeway headed that way and pointed out to Kelitha the city of Pahrump where all the brothels are and where i had went in 2004 (yes she knows I went to one lol)  I read my Barack Obama book while my dad continued watchin "Black Snake Moan" and probably another movie lol

Touched down after 2.5hrs and retrieved our bags and took the shuttle back to Masterpark.  Headed on down to HD Hotspurs in Kent for some grub.  Had an AWESOME 16oz medium rare prime rib.  Headed to my parents and parted ways, went back to check on tha Cane then up to Renton to get our kids.  Back to the freeway then home via Walgreens.  Checked on my doggies who were sooooo happy to see me!  Checked on all my plants which thrived even further in my absence.  Watered'em and Miracle Gro'd em all and back inside to transfer all video footage to start makin a movie outta it and finish this Book of Lon entry!  Kinda somber mood bein back but gotta get back to the real world. Total walkin? 4.5 miles! downside? just checked on WiiFit.. I gained 4lbs over that weekend. thats 1 pound per day. :(