In that gap was a slightly unexpected new puppy (which I wrote a bit about in the homeschool miscellany) and covid (not worth the ridiculously excessive fuss and the frantic stripping of as much freedom as possible in that space of time that was made of it, wouldn't recommend the headache though). And then there was me figuring it wasn't worth the blog because there hadn't been much prog and trying to manage that and consistently failing as other things kept happening (not least of which comp season started).
After a lot of stuffing around, I eventually worked out there was something either wrong with the file or with the particle system that was making my curve guides not work. A bit more experimentation later I found that recreating the particle system worked, and that NURBs paths no longer seemed to work but Beziers did.