They were pretty firm on the February timeframe. The previous update said that if it was earlier they would say so. I guess that was the one difference.
Well, they seem to be addressing your concern about having to explain why you wasted 4 months. Now we can explain why we wasted 2.5 months or why we were not able to find a timeslot.
Still trying to understand the reasoning behind that “expediently grading” comment in the update from two weeks ago. The grading shouldn’t take more than a week so even if they started on the 7th, it’d be slow at this point.