That someone would be me =).

No, I didn't install SSAS. I was just trying to see how much I could do in PowerPivot without using T-SQL. When I did the whole thing with T-SQL, I used (I think) a calendar table function from here, and since i could specify the start and end dates, I had no excess dates... Was just trying to get my head around M, but that might not be worth the hassle.