OK this is interesting, and the only thing I can think of is that it is a hardware issue that is starting to manifest itself in this odd way.
This relates to my email earlier today about relayd. Because of the odd way we use relayd with "/usr/bin/false" as the "check", we decided to just run some tests with /usr/bin/false. We ran it in a loop timing the execution each time. As it turns out, normally it is instantaneous (time of 0) but everyone once in a while it take 700ms or up to 2000ms. We tried the same with /usr/bin/true and see the same behavior. The only thing I can think of at this point is that it must be a HW issue starting to manifest itself. Any other ideas? -- "You should sit in nature for 20 minutes a day. Unless you are busy, then you should sit for an hour" - Zen Proverb