I would still check in every few days. It says now that they'll email you when a status changes but it seems hit or miss based on what I've read. (when I did mine you had to check yourself, no email option)
Since it can be tough to get an appointment I wouldn't want to miss the window.
Sounds like a good theory but I'm not sure. For hubby he's been at the same job and address forever, so we only listed one employer and one address. We have done several Caribbean cruises in the last 5 years so I was just joking with him that the Cayman Islands sitting at the top of his visited countries list might be biting him in the behind
But he's squeaky clean and other than our island adventures he's pretty boring on paper. So I'm a little surprised too. I know they're backed up from the shutdown but I wasn't expecting this for him. They both probably just got stuck in the bad queue.