post excerpt issues + image questions

In the WP settings I have 'full text' checked, but get excerpts anyway. How can I override the theme on this? If I end up keeping the excerpts, what is the best way to override WP excerpt coding to include the formatting of things like lists within the excerpt? Also, I have been trying to incorporate custom 'bullets' before some of the h3 tags (for example) into this site but neither vertical-align nor :before is having any effect. I am wondering if there is something in the theme that is blocking this. Can you help me out with this? The url is here and there are three 'bullets' located about half-way down and toward the bottom of the page. Thank you!