Yes, your #'s 2 and 3 I have experienced as well. The connection and requery cycles you mentioned are more evident in these last few releases.

Plus it is turning out to be more crash prone, the more I use it. I am considering trying to delete the prefs and perhaps reinstall, at least building new prefs.

I also downloaded something I have not yet tried called Jaguar Cache Cleaner. It's supposed to fix some apps that seem to crash too much.