gnucash VERY slow to start - guile using up 100% cpu

[freebsd.org at hyltown.com]

i realize i'm comparing apples to oranges, sort of - but there's definitely
a problem here ...

on my laptop, gnucash takes MINUTES to start - minutes pass before the splash
screen is even displayed. on my desktop it's almost immediate. below i'll
describe the hardware/software differences for comparison. if anyone has any
clue how to fix this problem i'd be VERY happy to hear from you!

the time tests below work like this: execute `time gnucash test.gc` from the
command-line, and click the exit button as soon as it appears. test.gc is
duplicated on each system, both copies are being opened from local disk.

==LAPTOP====================
thinkpad r40, 768MB RAM, pentium-m 1.4Ghz (very fast doing ~ everything)
running gnucash 1.8.8 on freebsd 5.2-current

FreeBSD treebeard.hyltown.com 5.2-CURRENT FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT #1: Mon Feb
2 16:38:59 EST 2004
root at treebeard.hyltown.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/20040131  i386

gnucash-1.8.8_1
guile-1.6.4_4
guile-gtk-0.31_1
slib-guile-3a1

$ time gnucash test.gc
real    2m53.681s
user    0m8.008s
sys     2m35.113s

==DESKTOP====================
custom desktop, 512MB RAM, 1Ghz via C3 (normally quite slower than the laptop)
running gnucash 1.8.8 on gentoo linux 1.4

Linux blackbox.hyltown.com 2.4.22-pre6-ac1-ieee1394 #2 Fri Aug 1 11:06:45 EDT
2003 i686 VIA Nehemiah CentaurHauls GNU/Linux

gnucash-1.8.8
guile-1.6.4-r1

$ time gnucash test.gc
real    0m8.910s
user    0m6.130s
sys     0m0.200s

======================
to add insult to injury, the linux gnucash is being run via ssh, X tunneled
back to laptop. it'd probably be even quicker if i were running from the
desktop console.

gnucash was just rebuilt on the laptop (freebsd) with `portupgrade -R gnucash`
so that all gnucash dependencies were upgraded as well. while gnucash is
taking its 3 minutes to startup, running `top` shows the guile process taking
up ~100% of the cpu. i have plenty of ram, nothing is swapping to disk, and
the system is otherwise plenty fast.

i have to think this is some kind of problem with one of the ports
involved, and not the system in general - because everything else seems to
be doing just fine ...

i have no idea where to go from here, this is kicking my butt...

anybody have any ideas?