This afternoon, I received a call from a colleague with the local MUG. In the course of our conversation I mentioned my syncing problem. His counsel:
In sum, I signed out from my iCloud account, waited 5 minutes, then signed back in and waited about 15 minutes as Apple restored and put things back to right.
So far, all is dandy. But I won't be surprised if a few nits & gotchas remain.
FWIW: my friend finds my problem and Apple's recent spate of server problems not exactly coincidental.
