What's Going On Box issue...

[Sin City]

I made a matrix style from scratch back on vB 3.0... now i am converting it all to 3.5.2 and figured i'd fix some things up that i never addressed in the previous version... i've decided to add the "view forum leaders" and "mark forums read" options to the bottom of my What's Going On box (which has been modified to have a top and bottom "bar")... my problem is illustrated below...


http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/4972/screenln0.jpg



and here is my coding...

PHP Code:

<!-- bottom -->
    <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
    <tr>
<td style="text-align: $stylevar[left]" class="tcat"><img src="http://www.site.com/forum/matrix/matcat_bottomleft.gif" alt="" /></td>
<td class="mcat" align="center" style="background-image: url(http://www.site.com/forum/matrix/matrixborderbgbottom.gif); text-align: center;"><div class="smallfont"><strong>
            <a href="forumdisplay.php?$session[sessionurl]do=markread">$vbphrase[mark_forums_read]</a>
            &nbsp; &nbsp;
            <a href="showgroups.php?$session[sessionurl]">$vbphrase[view_forum_leaders]</a>
        </strong></div></td>
<td style="text-align: $stylevar[right]" class="tcat"><img src="http://www.site.com/forum/matrix/matcat_bottomright.gif" alt="" /></td>
</tr>
</table>
   <!-- /bottom -->

<br />
<!-- end what's going on box --> 


any help would be appreciated... thanks in advance