Another week, another party

When I opened the door for my shower this morning (so the mirror wouldn't fog up), the banner from the Atlanta Parrot Head Club was waving at me from the guest house behind us.

It's party time in Margaritaville, and Duval was closed from Southard to Eaton, with a big stage set up in the street at Fleming this morning. From the afternoon on, the corner was ringing with steel pan rhythms -- and rumors that Jimmy Buffett himself was going to show.

Tens of thousands of Parrot Heads are in town, and you just have to smile when you see them -- roving in jovial gaggles, pretty mild-mannered but certainly happy to have a drink in Paradise and listen to music and catch up with friends.

And of course they make me miss the Carsonettes -- the crew at my dentist's office in Chattanooga, who are Buffett fans supreme. I'll hoist a mojito and wish that they, like so many other absent friends, were here.