IE select issue with hover

A friend and myself are trying to workaround IE (7/8). We have built a canonical example here:

http://www.mathgladiator.com/share/ie-select-bug-hover-css-menus.htm

Using a CSS menu, we would like to have selects in them. However, in IE, the menu goes away when you interact with the select box. We believe this has to do with a bug in how selects affect events.

Is there a workaround? At least with pure CSS or DOM hacks?