Choosing an event calendar widget

So I’ve been playing with a few methods to create a simple event calendar. Doesn’t even really need to look like a calendar, a nice descending list would do. I’ve tried some options and maybe could get some feedback.

I used to used webcalendar as a standalone before i started using WP. Very nice overall if not overkill.

What’s built in to WP:
Create a category called Events. Make future posts. Could keep each event totally separate or add to the first event of the day and add chronologically. This is fast and easy as it is a create new post or edit an existing. I don’t see a way to create recurring posts. Also you can’t see what’s coming until published. I found a snippet of code to get future posts that would allow for a page and does a search for what’s ahead. Not bad.

I found a couple of plugins like events calendar and some would do sidebar but not a page. Or pages but not a list view. One had an import from iCal function but broke. Tried gigs calendar but not updated for v2.5. EC3 not yet updated afaik.

The Google plugin looks great and it has display options for list, month. It can import iCal and does a lot. But, you can only link one calendar into your site. So if you wanted the Celtics / Red Sox / and ladies chess schedules to show on your site you can see how managing anything but a simple calendar might become a challenge. Requires another set of logins and data stored outside your own site. Who uses this and is the extra admin worth the extra trouble? Maybe I’m missing something here.

How the Google calendar does it’s this is fantastic but I would make all my calendars separately in my home computer using iCal just to export each individually and import to one main calendar at google just to have to link it to my site. Yikes! Has anyone seen a 2.5 plugin that will import iCal? Can a page be created and display a list? or a category where the events show up as posts?

Sorry that got a bit long.