I look forward to gettting EIR back just as much as anyone else (MUST TEST NEW MAP), but I definately understand that life comes first.
If you think about it, odds are there is going to be less and less time for this sort of thing, considering the time of year. Holidays are an absolute nightmare that consume most of a persons time, especially one that has two families to appease (dash having his and the woman's to deal with).
I personally am just hoping for 1.9 before shit gets to crazy, ie exams, X-mas, so forth. But I think that realistically the soonest I expect 2.0 is sometime in late January. (Though I wouldn't mind being wrong one bit

)