Well after adding the Vcc to reset pin jumpers as Stan suggested, I am pleased to report that both the boards I have built are working just fine, with no erratic behavior at all. So based on an example of two, all seems good. It turns out that adding the jumpers to the 556 socket is very fast and easy to do from the underside of the boards of course, so no big deal. RTR12 is also doing independent testing on his breadboard circuit of the same schematic, so hopefully he will confirm the results. So if all goes well with the collective results, we should be able to make revisions to the gerber files and repost them here to replace the earlier version. As always, this has been a good collective effort with input from many who are wiser than I, and hopefully the final result will be something worthwhile. Stay tuned. 
Cheers,
Rod
