YES! dooglus you are a genius detective. I am logged off BlockChain.info now, and will check my settings later, but as I recall when I set up the account I checked the "generous" checkbox thinking it would speed up transactions (since I had read that some BTC transactions take 1 hour to confirm.
OK, so by checking 'generous' you made sure that your transactions get a big fee attached to them, which in turn means that the miners are going to include your transaction in blocks in preference to other ones with smaller fees.
But blocks are only found on average every 10 minutes or so, and sometimes we can go an hour without seeing a block at all, just due to bad luck. When that happens it doesn't matter how much fee you included. The big fee makes the miners try to include your transaction in a block, but if they can't find a block it doesn't matter how much you pay them, your transaction doesn't get confirmed until they find a block.
If you pay too small of a fee, you run the risk of the miners not bothering with your transaction even if they do find a block.