Today we got back from Portland after a fun, intense, and productive week. The tournament was invaluable in terms of preparation, and the hosting team, the Portland Thorns, continued to prove why they are the standard for professionalism and sportsmanship in women's sports.

Also: IT WAS REUNION CITY. Everyone I've ever played with before in club or youth national teams was within a one mile radius of me for ten days, so the possibilities were endless. Here's a review of the trip in superlative form.

Quote of the trip:

1) Christen Press- (stares directly at me on the way to practice and says) "I'm serious! I don't say funny things to get people to like me." (in response to a debate in the van over whether what she said about people being allowed to leave their house naked in Portland was actually true.)

The reason this is so funny is because she said it looking directly at me. She knows I have a comedy blog and every day in the carpool I crack a minimum of 10 jokes hoping to get laughs from her and Alyssa. TRYING to be funny is literally the only social leg I stand on. Kudos to Christen for reminding me that success breeds complacency, and only the paranoid survive.

Surprise moment of the trip:

Morgan Brian frequently posts on Yelp to review restaurants:

Absolutely love this from Bean. She's right. It doesn't matter where you are, who you are, or what you have going on. If food is good, the people need to know, and if food is bad, the people need to know even more. In my eyes, this is just selfless from Morgan. Oh, the service at brunch was bad and you're not a good enough citizen to tell the next guy about it? Well, Morgan Brian is doing it in the middle of playing for the Houston Dash, USWNT, and planning a wedding. Best part? She's a ruthless critic. No softball compliments under her screen name. (which is hilarious but we won't reveal for privacy reasons.)

@Yelp idk if you guys typically endorse athletes, but maybe a women's soccer star who hasn't given the ball away since 2001 is a good place to start.

Top Reunion- Kealia Ohai

Kealia and I have been friends for a long time. We had a lot of laughs and caused a lot of (harmless) trouble in our u-20 cycle. I feel like everyone who has been in the "world" of the single sport for a long time has that one friend who will always view the drama and the antics going on in the same light as they do, no matter how long it's been.

Getting sushi was roughly 50% as fun as my visit to Chapel Hill in the spring of 2012, so yeah, you could say it was as good as a midweek healthy dinner can get.

Overall MVP- Emily Sonnett

Combining the time difference with the fact that I have adult ADHD, I was wide awake every morning by 6 am.

I think I let her sleep in on game day once, but I'm so close with Sonnett that I didn't care about waking her up. Every single day I'd text her at 7 am and force her to meet me for coffee. I'd wait an hour for her to answer (she never did) and then I'd start Facetiming her until I knew she was out of bed and agreed to meet me at the place with the organic almond milk.

While her outfits and her snapchats may have been subpar, her loyalty to entertain was not. Sonnett you keep this up, and I'll hire you as my number 2. (Is that below or above our interns?)