Mysql updates kills mongrel instance

Rails
1

trying to troubleshoot an issue where 1 of the mongrel instances goes
haywire (99% CPU Util.) and i am forced to kill that PID and restart the
cluster.
I have found that I can reproduce the issue at will by calling my update
method (code below). When I tail the log file, I see the update kicking
off and it never completes. I don’t think there is anything special
about this code!!
I’ve also include my vhost config, as I’m not entirely sure that it is
correct. There seems to be a lot of different version/opinions on how
these should be set up.
Updated to the latest gems and at this point, I kinda outta ideas! This
is a joyent solaris box!
Hope somebody out there can help!
Thanks

@event = Event.find(params[:id])
approved = Status.find_by_name("Approved")
old_status = @event.status_id
new_status = params[:event][:status_id]
if @event.update_attributes(params[:event])
  if (new_status == approved.id and new_status != old_status)
    @event.approved_by_id = session[:user]
    @event.save
  end
end

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.mysite.com

    ServerAlias mysite.com

    DocumentRoot /var/www/apps/mysite/current/public

    <Directory /var/www/apps/mysite/current/public/>
            Options FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride None
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all
    </Directory>

    ProxyRequests Off

    ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:9089/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:9090/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:9091/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:9092/
    ProxyPreserveHost on

    <Proxy balancer://my_cluster>

            BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:9089
            BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:9090
            BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:9091
            BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:9092
    </Proxy>

    RewriteEngine On

    # Prevent access to .svn directories
    RewriteRule ^(.*/)?\.svn/ - [F,L]
    ErrorDocument 403 "Access Forbidden"

    # Check for maintenance file and redirect all requests
    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/system/maintenance.html -f
    RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !maintenance.html
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}  !\.(css|jpg)$
    RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.mysite.com/system/maintenance.html

[L]

    # Rewrite index to check for static
    RewriteRule ^/$ /index.html [QSA]

    # Rewrite to check for Rails cached page
    RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]

    # Redirect all non-static requests to cluster
    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ balancer://my_cluster%{REQUEST_URI}

[P,QSA,L]

    # Deflate
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml
    BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
    BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
    BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html