18 deposits yesterday, more than 55 now and I am still waiting to sync before entering the Pyramid.

Try making a backup of your chaindata folder, or run a new one using --datadir "your/custom/directory/here" and then include the following arguments in geth: --fast --cache 512 (assuming you have a few GBs of RAM).
Process takes about 15 minutes to sync on my pc from block 0 to most recent one, at least when using the newest homestead wallet.