I decided to slice and dice things a bit. I knew I had some rearranging to do, but when I took a look at the end result I wasn’t happy with it. So I gutted an entire chapter and moved a couple of the main elements to where they belonged. Took out some info I didn’t have a rock-solid clear memory of, and changed the tone of the rest to more closely match what it was really like for me at the time. I’m not done yet, but the changes are very pleasing.
And as a bonus, the word count went down by about a thousand words.