Usually, after around 10 or so posts, your account will be taken off of moderation status. It's just to prevent spam bots from joining.
A mod has to manually approve your post, and as far as how long it takes to approve the post, it just depends on which mod gets on first to see there is a backlog of posts needing approval. Not too many active mods around these days, so admittedly, it's not as fast as it used to be, but I always check when I'm here. Sorry for the delay!