Nose to the Grindstone: More Revisions

I got back to work on the book this afternoon and evening, and re-discovered what a lousy writer I am in first draft.  Of course, my standards are fairly high, but you'd think I'd notice when a sentence started acting like a kitten tangled in a ball of yarn.  On and on with increasing separation between subject and verb and many intervening clauses, phrases, parenthetical bits, etc.  (The solution's easy at least.  Stab one of those commas with a fork and turn it into a period.  Do it...