I switched the name server we use here from the server owner (vertexhost.com) to my own nameservers at highlandhosting.com.
I sort of think the issues we've been having here was due to funkiness of the other nameserver which I believe is away in another state from our webserver in Vegas. I hope this is the problem. This wasn't easy to wrap my head around as it is/was an intermittent failure.
Please let me know if you see any improvement or worsening or any comments at all here.