I have to tell you that nothing has changed between the piece of code that is kicking this error off and this piece of code. Please tell me what the heck has happened here as I am most frustrated.

On one level, by posting no code you've given us little to work with.

On another level--the wetware level--you've given us plenty. If you approach this problem with the attitude of "but nothing has changed!" you are setting yourself up. It's a bug in your thinking. Things change. It's a fundamental law.

• Clocks tick onward. When the date changes code might be taking alternate paths.
• Underlying data changes, causing code to take alternate paths.
• The environment changes, often by someone installing (or uninstalling) software or service packs (or Perl modules). Or permission bits get flipped, or disks fill up.

Accept that something has changed, and get on with finding out what that something is. And yes, that can be frustrating, but it's a probably a learning opportunity (even if it is an ill-timed one).

A useful exercise in cases like this is to try to distill the problem down to a small example that strips out extraneous detail. By the time you're there, the problem is liable to be apparent. If it isn't, you'll have a clean snippet to post.