One of the primary consequences of a reboot is to clear the RAM of its contents -- start with a clean slate. Windows doesn't usually need it either, but it is a rigorous step in troubleshooting as part of error replication.
While I could potentially opkg for the latest and greatest, I prefer not... my religion stays with the .pnd because it's modular and won't require reinstall upon future releases of the OS.
I had already tried deleting the appdata/pidgin folder and recreating the account data, but no joy was found there. Your point about errors in the terminal did make me look for options in Pidgin, and sure enough there is a debug window. One error I get seems benign; some permissions setting to a file ending in .xml.save. The other error I get is a timeout, which leads me to believe it's a network problem. Which is strange, because neither I nor my roommate have changed anything with that since setting it up.
Oh well, I'm about to travel so I'll test Pidgin at various AP's to see if I can achieve a connection. That should narrow it down right quick; obviously this issue is in all likelihood user error.
Thanks