Unfortunately, Spotlight in Leopard has a bug. A pretty bad one.

As the notes change, Spotlight feels the need to hit the Spotlight index file 22-27 times for no reason, and only for some people. Two out of my three machines are affected. I’ve been told there’s nothing I can change and that I should wait on an update to the OS to resolve the issue.

This sucks, generally, but looking at how the issue presents, I can’t see a clear way around it (as notes change, I load a new NIB — the act of reading the NIB causes Spotlight to go haywire).

I’ll post a note here when I have more information on it. If you either have access to read it, or want to “vote” for it, it’s bug 5591746.