They’re having a tournament and resource fair May 9 at the American Lake Veterans Golf Course for Fort Lewis’ Warrior Transition Battalion.

The course on the grounds of the American Lake Veterans Hospital has been redone to accommodate people with disabilities. It’s a volunteer operation and a labor of love for some great people in the local veterans and golf communities.

The resource fair will feature information about employment opportunities and other services for returning veterans and their families.

The events run 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

We’ve told you before about Brian Turner and his collection of poems, “Here, Bullet,” which describe his experiences in Iraq with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division in 2003-04.

He answered Washington Post readers’ questions in an online forum today on the paper’s web site.

Army Capt. Joe Kobes of Sumner came up short of the $1 million prize on NBC’s “Deal or No Deal” tonight.

With a good spin of the “deal wheel” he tripled the $26,000 he won in the regular game to walk out with $78,000. Not too far off a year’s pay, including housing allowance, and nothing to sneeze at.

But clearly Kobes used up a lot of his really, really good luck where maybe he needed it more – making it through three trips to Iraq.

None, maybe, to a letter carrier.

From Wikipedia:

Sleet may refer to:

* A mixture of snow and rain (particularly in countries where British English is spoken)

* Ice pellets (mainly within the United States and Canada)

And then:

Hail is a form of precipitation which consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice (hailstones). Hailstones on Earth usually consist mostly of water ice and measure between 5 and 50 millimeters in diameter, with the larger stones coming from severe thunderstorms.[1] Hail is only produced by cumulonimbi (thunderclouds), usually at the front of the

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Soldier-turned-businessman Logan D. Coffey was killed in a crash Sunday in Lakewood when his Ferrari collided with a transit shuttle bus.

Coffey’s Tactical Tailor shop has been the first choice for Fort Lewis soldiers looking for specialized gear for use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I think that’s because he really took their interests to heart,” said Gary Brackett, manager of business and trade development at the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce. “He wasn’t just trying to sell his products to them, but he was trying to make a product that they wanted, that met their needs.”

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About 100 military police soldiers from the 66th MP Company are due home to Fort Lewis tomorrow afternoon after 15 months in Afghanistan. Fifty more will come later in the month, Fort Lewis said in a press release.

Welcome home ceremony is set for 4:30 p.m. at Soldiers Field House. The company trained Afghan police officers “while providing security and law enforcement support to U.S. and allied forces in the region,” according to the release.

The company was featured in a Department of Defense public relations story for its work on the Pakistan border.

The McClatchy mothership’s intrepid Leila Fadel had this good take from Sadr City that moved Friday. It features Stryker soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 25 Infantry Division out of Hawaii.

I don’t know of any Fort Lewis soldiers working in Sadr City at the moment – and with nearly everybody due home in the next couple months the post probably won’t have units in that fight. But Fadel’s is a good soldier’s eye view of the situation on the ground there.

She also posted some video of soldiers engaged in a firefight.

We’ll be tuning in to KING 5 at 8 p.m. Monday to see how Army Capt. Joe Kobes of Sumner fares in his bid for the big pile on “Deal or No Deal.”

In case you’re not a regular viewer, this is what the fuss is about:

That said, when I asked his dad, Ken, why he thinks Joe went through the considerable effort of trying out for the show, he did not hesitate: “The money.”

Duh.