LucasArts Style Speech AND Sierra Style Inventory

[Arclight]

So basically I want to have LucasArts style object descriptions and speech (text displayed above the character on the main screen) as well as a Sierra style inventory GUI (a window that opens up to display the inventory). My problem is that I don't really know what to do for the item descriptions when the inventory GUI is open. Since the descriptions for background hotspots and the like will appear over the character, the same should be true of inventory items... but the GUI will be covering everything behind it, including the character.

What should I do? I really don't want to go the route of having a description window open up on top of the inventory GUI for these descriptions, but I can see that just having the text appear wherever on the screen the character happens to be standing being an issue as well.

So... what would you do?

Edit: I'm not looking for any sort of technical implementation, just a general concept. Kind of an adventure game theory sort of thing.

[Gilbert]

You may temporarily disable the GUI to let the character say the description and restore the GUI after completion.

[Esseb]

Sam and Max, Curse of Monkey Island, and Full Throttle all had inventory windows like you describe.

In Sam and Max the inventory item description (said by Sam) is displayed centered at the top of the screen, while in Curse of Monkey Island and Full Throttle the description (said by Guybrush and Ben) is displayed over wherever their head currently is. Neither approach seemed distracting to me when I played the games.

[Arclight]

Gilbert: I considered that, but I think that would be more distracting than just letting the text sit on top of the GUI.

Esseb: Well, would you look at that! Yeah, that seems to work just fie - I suppose I needed the screenies to convince me. I think that's what I'll go ahead and do. Thanks!