Word text annoyance

I write lots of statistics papers.

My everyday word processor is, like millions of other people, Microsoft Word. The 2003 version in my case.

There is one thing that really annoys me. There is no simple way to generate an 'over bar' text decoration, without having to go the whole Insert-Object-Microsoft Equation 3.0 route. Which is really frustrating because this decoration is

(a) about the only symbol you can't easily reproduce using normal text in Word, and
(b) about the most common statistical symbol (sample mean).

There's got to be a better way: perhaps a specialist font I can install?