Sounds like your downloading blocks?
Yes, I'm downloading the blockchain(?). Sorry, but not sure if I understand the question.
There are 11 connections, and I've been trying for weeks to get up to speed. Does it make sense that at one point there were 197701 blocks remaining and then when the process halts and I restart the wallet, it starts at 828822?
The bootstrap crashed the wallet.
If your seeing connections and your seeing numbers change then your wallet is likely trying to update. The bootstrap can appear to crash the wallet but that is not usually the case. While it can hog up system resources to make it appear that your wallet has crashed, it's probably still updating. We're working to improve this process as we completely agree that it could run more smoothly.
There are additional ways to confirm if the wallet is updating when you think it may be frozen, but it sounds like your wallet may already be trying to update and you should just let it run rather then restarting or interrupting the process otherwise.