>I have heard nothing but horror stories about dealings with the NIC
>in the last month or two, including the domain my day job is at
>being shut down 3 times in one week and not being able to get throughSame here. Seems the WHOIS database went south and rs.internic.net was
unreachable for at least 24hrs. Then Email was being bounced... Sounds like
a minor meltdown....
Which rs.internic.net? 
I had 27 e-mails go out today to the InterNIC, every single one of them
was delievered immediately.
Check your mail configuration.