Hi Kirk,
For the first question I'd suggest you to go and use ezEdit instead of the Wizard. Select your lists and then select the fields that you want to display.
Please let me know how that goes.
Regarding the second question, talk to the users how they'd like to see the data. Since we're talking about dates you can offer them some options sort the result by date, group by date, expand /collapse the group by default. Also the user has the option to sort by different fields using the header of the field.