jQuery UI datepicker - using multiple date formats

jQuery UI datepicker - using multiple date formats

Okay, here's what I have so far...
  1. // calendar
            $("#datepicker").datepicker({
                onSelect: function(date,instance){
                    $(".eventdateheader").html(date);
                    $.ajax
                    ({
                        type: "GET",
                        url: "example.php",
                        data: "date="+date
                        success: function(result)
                        {
                           //do something
                        }
                   }); 
                },
                dateFormat: 'M d, yy'
            });
















What I want to achieve: when a user clicks on a date, it changes the header (as you can see from the .html), formatted "M d, yy", but also runs an AJAX query to fetch all the info associated with that date. Naturally, I'd want the latter to be formatted in UNIX timestamp. Is there a way to achieve this using jQuery parameters? I feel like there should be, but googling isn't helping...

Thanks in advance!