The Diving Bell, The Butterfly and The Giz

Looking for inspiration for my Monday morning post, I visited my friend Chloe's blog and she had blogged about a movie we went to see together last week called the Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I'm going to do the same.

Chloe and I are part of the SK+G Double-D's book-club. I can't remember what exactly the Double-D's stand for but I think it's something along the lines of Daring Divas. Dashing Dames. I digress. In book club, we read books that are being adapted into movies. When the movie is released, we go see it and compare and contrast over a drink or four afterwards. The release of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was so limited that it snuck up on us and I was unable to read the book. After seeing the movie though, I am definitely going to pick it up.

I see a lot of movies but this was one of the best ones I have seen in the past year. The film is based on the true story of the editor of French Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffered a massive stroke at age 43 and woke up completely paralyzed except for his left eye. In the movie, you experience his "locked-in syndrome" defined on Wikipedia as "a condition in which a patient is aware and awake, but cannot move or communicate due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body. The condition has been described as "the closest thing to being buried alive". His speech therapist devises a method for him to communicate by blinking his eye by creating an alphabet that is in order from most commonly used letter in the French alphabet to the least commonly used letter. Jean-Do then wrote an entire memoir based on this method. The movie was beautifully done with a majority of it being based on Jean-Do's one-eye perspective which really made it more of an experience then anything else. The movie was nominated for 4 Academy Awards but unfortunately, didn't take home any golden statues. I'm not sure if this movie is still playing in a theatre near you, but I highly recommend at least adding it to your Netflix Queue.

Another perk of my weekend was having my B.F.F. for a surprise visit in town. Her name is Linzi G a.k.a. The Giz and she left me a few months ago to move to Denver, CO. It's where her heart has always been and she is incredibly happy out there although everyone back here misses her terribly. Her sister, who is like my own, got married this weekend which was cause for celebration. So celebrate we did. All over town. We visited McMullens Irish Pub over on Trop on Friday night and Saturday we visited The Havana Cigar and Wine Bar before hitting up The Griffin. The Griffin has really become one of our favorite spots to go. It's located in the new 'Freemont East' District and stands out among the rest with it's feeling of a cozy basement complete with fireplaces, leather couches and brick walls. It can get pretty hipster in there which makes for great people watching. My only warning to you would be that the drinks come strong. However, Freemont is always a good place to walk off a few if you need to afterwards.

Sunday, Lauren, Jenner and I went to my nephew's 5th birthday party that was held at Mini Grand Prix. With go-cart racing, photobooths and skee-ball, Jenner re-capped our afternoon perfectly when he said, "I would rather get a table here than at a nightclub."

I sure hope Jesse enjoyed his party as much as we did.