A quote from "Open House" by Elizabeth Berg

"I could call Rita. But why run up the phone bill? I'll see her soon. Besides, Rita's probably busy, having a terrific time, eating dinner with forty creative, California types, all of them mellow, all of them wearing contemporary jewelry and natural fibers and drinking the Napa Valley wines they're so damn proud of. I hate eating with California people when they aren't in California. All they do is talk about their superior produce, as though they are responsible for it, as though I don't know that the only contribution they make is to pull up into the too-clean parking lot of the grocery store in their nonrust California car! convertible and fill it with avocados. When they eat in restaurants outside their own state, all they do is say, "In California," loudly, as though it's a credit to their personhood that they live there and they need to make sure the waiter and everyone else knows that they do. And why? No seasons, a bunch of airheads running around being so irritatingly happy you wanted to wring their necks. Everybody is happy there. Call directory assistance and you get soe ecstatic person, thrilled to death that they live in California, they have a job in California. Who cares? Who wants to live in California?"