inserting a timestamp

hey all, I am having a hell of a time getting a timestamp to insert correctly. it keeps coming up 00000000000000 here's what i have $date_avail = mktime (0,0,0,$month,$day,$year); $avail = date("F j, Y", $date_avail); echo "Date Available: $avail"; this works fine and displays the date correctly My insert statement is fine [no mistakes] I insert $date_avail into the date_avail field which is type TIMESTAMP - when i inserti get a 0000000000000 If i change the field type of date_avail to VARCHAR it inserts correctly and i can reference it as a timestamp and display correctly [a mysql db] can anyone help, i guess that using varchar is fine, but i have wasted a half a day and am a little pissed about this. I noticed that even when i try to change the date_avail field with phpmyadmin to NOT NULL it changes to NULL - i think that this is the prob, but i do not know thanks much olinux