Strange Behavior - Background images and animation syncing

I've been working on a presentation for the last several days and all of a sudden this afternoon I started noticing weirdness.

1. When I preview or publish, part of the background image of my slides disappears on all but the first (title) slide. (I'm using a modified version of a template from Tom Kuhlmann, so it should work, right? ) In fact, it did work until this afternoon.
2. On three of my slides, the animations are about 2.5 seconds slow. I sync them exactly, and then when I preview or publish, they don't appear when they're supposed to.

I've rebooted. I've tried publishing to a completely different folder. I've tried publishing in different formats (CD, Web, LMS, etc.) I've switched presenter templates. Nothing has worked. :(

Help?

Running Office 2007, Win XP, Articulate Presenter '09