LAS VEGAS – I had a close shave here Monday and lived to tell you about it.

During the International Council of Shopping Centers conference, V's Barbershop, a young franchise based in the Greater Phoenix area, had two chairs open for anyone who needed their neck hair shaved. And boy, I had a scruffy neck.

So Mario Herrera, director of barbers, applied the warm creme and scraped my neck with a straight razor.

Meanwhile, Jim Valenzuela, founder and president of V's Barbershop, said the company would sell franchises in the Puget Sound region if anyone stepped forward to meet the requirements. The franchise fee costs $25,000. The royalty fee equals 5 percent of gross sales. The advertising fee equals 3 percent. The total build-out of a shop requires an investment estimated between $194,000 to $386,000, according to company materials.

At a separate booth at the conference, real estate specialists for IN-N-OUT Burger solicited potential new locations for its juicy Double Doubles and other burgers. (One outlet sits just across Interstate 15 from the convention center here.)

Alas, the company, founded in 1948, would not bring one to the Puget Sound region even if we begged and claimed the IN-N-OUT cheeseburger tastes better than Frisko Freeze's burgers. A company representative says you'll have to visit Nevada, California or Arizona to get your fix for the foreseeable future.

Call it a decrease in benefits rather than a rate increase. Either way, Puget Sound Energy electricity customers will see their bills increase by an average of $10.28 per month thanks to a decision announced this morning by the Bonneville Power Administration.

In a letter to seven Northwest utilities, BPA said it would not be sending checks amounting to some $25 million related to "residential exchange program benefits." Those benefits had been passed on as credits to utility customers.

The announcement by BPA came after a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

BPA spokesman Mike Hansen told The News Tribune today that the payments would be held in a reserve account "until we work through this issue."

Steve Reynolds, Puget Sound Energy chairman, president and CEO, lamented the announcement and said it was "a simple question of fairness."

Mark Gendron, BPA vice president of requirements marketing, said in the letter to utilities that the agency is "exploring all potential viable avenues for rehearing, including by the full court if possible."

The marathon of photo opportunities and events leading up to the July 8, 2007 (7/8/07) rollout of the first Boeing 787 Dreamliner grows larger today with Boeing holding an open house at its new 787 assembly line in Everett.

The open house follows a string of well-photographed late night arrivals of the key substructures of the new plane aboard Boeing swollen 747, the Dreamlifter.

Gov. Christine Gregoire and a clutch of Boeing executives will lead the cheers this afternoon displaying for the first time what Boeing's four years of research and design and the state's billions in tax cuts have wrought.

Give credit to Boeing's PR team for creating the buzz surrounding the plane, the best-selling jetliner in history judged by its pre-flight sales. But the press and the public has an almost insatiable appetite for a new aircraft, especially one bearing so much promise:

* The world's first mostly-composite jetliner.
* The world's most efficient airliner with costs 20 percent below state-of-the-art commercial jets.
* A game-changing jetliner that promises to connect dozens of cities worldwide non-stop instead of through big hub cities.
* A plane with bigger windows, better entertainment systems, lower cabin altitudes and fewer emissions and noise than its predecessors.

The open house will be followed shortly by the Paris Air Show, always an Easter Parade for the aerospace companies. Expect more big orders to surface at that show for both the 787 and its Airbus rival, the A350XWB.

Let's hope all this bravado is followed by real performance. It would be an embarrassing moment for Boeing if 7/8/07 came and the plane that rolled out was held together with duct tape.