[xmonad] xmonad on gnome: permanently busy cursor?

Hi everyone, I have followed the wiki instructions to setup xmonad on Gnome (Ubuntu 9.10) http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_Gnome and it worked beautifully. Just one thing is wrong: the cursor is permanently in "busy" state. I have noticed that this only happens when I enable (and add to the gnome panel) xmonad log applet. Oddly, if I do "sudo killall Xorg" and start my session over the problem is gone. I have seen others mention this problem http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?s=60a2086ae873324dce1d75cbad6e5402&p=8517408&postcount=10 but couldn't find any solution to it. Can anyone tell me how to fix this? thanks! lara