Unfortunately, no suggestions worked. (I didn't switch to Opera).
I narrowed the problem down to "pagead2.gogglesyndication.com" trying to load was what was hanging the pages. One site suggest loading a FireFox plugin, "NoScript", so I did that and that's what worked. Mostly. I'm having other slight issues with stuff appearing that hasn't before, on this site as well, but with this I can deal.
Thanks again for all your suggestions.