Date Module Looping, and hanging server

I am seeing my Apache server getting hammered, and a strace of the processes eating CPU reveal that date could be the module causing issue.

Here is a short snippet of the repeating output I get from strace:

lstat("/home", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=8192, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/modules", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/modules/date", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/modules/date/date_php4", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/modules/date/date_php4/date_php4_lib.inc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=14331, ...}) = 0
open("/home/drupal_portal/modules/date/date_php4/date_php4_lib.inc", O_RDONLY) = 19
fstat(19, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=14331, ...}) = 0
lseek(19, 0, SEEK_CUR)                  = 0
close(19)                               = 0
time(NULL)                              = 1224523428
time(NULL)                              = 1224523428
time(NULL)                              = 1224523428
time(NULL)                              = 1224523428
time(NULL)                              = 1224523428
time(NULL)                              = 1224523428
time(NULL)                              = 1224523428
getcwd("/home/drupal_portal", 4096) = 29
time(NULL)                              = 1224523428
lstat("/home", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=8192, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/modules", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/modules/date", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/modules/date/date_php4", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat("/home/drupal_portal/modules/date/date_php4/date_php4_calc.inc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=41405, ...}) = 0
open("/home/drupal_portal/modules/date/date_php4/date_php4_calc.inc", O_RDONLY <unfinished ...>

I am not seeing any errors persay, but this is definitely locking up my server. I am wondering if I decreased the php timeout, I would start seeing exactly where the looping was going on. Eventually what happens is apache starts spawning so many processes, it eats up CPU, and memory and eventually locks up the server, or apache grinds to a halt. I have been troubleshooting this issue going on 2 weeks, and my colleague finally pointed me to the strace and the culprit as you see above.

Does anyone else have any similar behavior, or a method to nail down exactly where this is looping?

I posted something related to this here: http://drupal.org/node/322847, but just doing that didn't seem to eliminate the issues I am seeing. But it does seem very related.