Navigating to desktop hangs finder
I'm running 10.7.4 and everytime I navigate to the desktop, I get a beachball for 60-180ish seconds. Every. Single. Time. It doesn't matter if I'm in an open/save dialogue box in another app and click the desktop sidebar icon, in a finder window clicking the sidebar icon, in finder typing cmd-shift-G ~/Desktop, or double clicking through the gui. In fact the only ways I've discovered to navigate to the desktop without a hang are: 1) activate finder then "hide others" or 2) navigate through terminal. This guy seems to have solved a very similar problem http://www.macworld.com/article/1163227/fix_a_lion_file_opening_hang_in_mac_os_x _10_7_2.html , but when I go to ~/Library/Application\ Support, there is no "Unity" folder. I've also tried repairing disk permissions, repairing user permissions, rebuilding the desktop database, and restarting in safe boot mode. I'm not connected to any network drives or devices. I'm running out of ideas. Please help, kind internet patrons.
PowerMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)