LJ design question

I've been messing around with s2 LJ styles (yes, because I do everything five years after everybody else does it). I've got a nice, boring clean and simple design, with some colors I like, and my page and the comments page look just fine to me, but I'm having some trouble with the friends page.

Does anyone know how to fix that white bar on the left, behind everyone's icon? Can I get rid of it? Change the color of it to #555555?

And, getting even more arcane ... is there any way to make LJ put the date, as well as the time, by every entry on the friends page? to add a little horizontal breathing room between the icon section on the left and the main text section in the middle? To add either a rule or some vertical breathing room between one entry and the next?