I don't blame you one bit Dysfunction - I'm not buying office for mac until the next iteration comes out that supports vba. Luckily enough I can use office '07 at work when I really need it, and Open Office the rest of the time.
This works, but has a lot of overhead.. and to be honest, really irritates me that Microsofts poor planning forces this.actually Office 08 for Mac doesn't look as great as I expected. And many features are "soon-to-come" too. However, why would I need those when my need is just typing academic documents? ) iWork seems ok but quite far-behind if you compare with MSoffice.
Solution suggested: Have an virtual xp OS, use MSoffice 07 directly on Leopard