jQuery UI Sortable connectedList ui.item.parent returning empty in IE

I'm having a rather confounding issue with Internet Explorer (go figure). I have 3 connectedLists for assigning projects to developers. The right hand list has the unassigned projects, and the other two are for each developer team. I can drag from the unassigned list to either of the two tracks, drag between the tracks, or move an item back to the unassigned list. All of this works perfectly in Firefox.

However, when I try it out in IE 8, the ui.item.parent() method return an empty string, so I do not know which list it has been dropped into. Additionally, I can only drag the bottom item in the list. If I select one of the other items (say I have 3 in the unassigned projects list), I can't move it, and it makes the item below it disappear.

Here's the fiddle for it: http://jsfiddle.net/Earendil/VgkEB/9/

and here's an image of what it should l开发者_运维技巧ook like (it looks a little funny in jsFiddle): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/298258/MatrixHelpIESux.jpg