Apple iWork Pages problem

Apologies to my regular readers, but I have a rather intractable computer problem and I'm hoping that by posting to the internet, I may find some help.

The Pages Problem
Here's the deal.  I use iWork's Pages document program for most of my reports at work.  In the past couple months, I routinely have a problem crop up where I can no longer switch objects (images, tables, text boxes) from floating to inline.  A secondary symptom is that I can no longer drag and drop items off the Dock.

Things I've tried:

• Trashing the Pages preference files
• Trashing the Dock preference files
• Killing the Dock in Terminal: killall -Dock
• Repairing disk permissions
• Screaming, pounding my desk, searching Apple's support forums

A workaround
I can reliably solve the problem temporarily by logging out of my account.  The problem seems to crop up at random some time after I've been using Pages.

System Setup
OS X 10.6.3
Pages 4.0.3
MacBook Pro (late 2006)