diff --git a/heckle.cabal b/heckle.cabal
--- a/heckle.cabal
+++ b/heckle.cabal
@@ -1,7 +1,10 @@
 name:                heckle
-version:             2.0.1.5
+version:             2.0.1.6
 synopsis:            Jekyll in Haskell (feat. LaTeX)
-description:         A static site generator that supports LaTeX/PDF and Markdown/HTML posts. Care has been taken to make it configurable, easy to use, and unopinionated.
+description:         A static site generator that supports LaTeX-PDF and Markdown-HTML posts. Care has been taken to make it configurable, easy to use, and unopinionated.
+
+                     To get started, check out https://github.com/2016rshah/heckle
+                     
 homepage:            https://github.com/2016rshah/heckle
 license:             MIT
 author:              Rushi Shah
@@ -24,9 +27,9 @@
                    , process >= 1.2.0.0
                    , split >=0.2 && <0.3
                    , tagsoup >= 0.13.3
-                   , dates >= 0.2.2.1
                    , pandoc >= 1.17.0.3
                    , pandoc-types >= 1.16.1
+                   , time >= 1.6.0.0
   default-language:  Haskell2010
 
 executable heckle
diff --git a/src/Heckle.hs b/src/Heckle.hs
--- a/src/Heckle.hs
+++ b/src/Heckle.hs
@@ -23,8 +23,17 @@
 
 import qualified Text.HTML.TagSoup as TagSoup
 
-import Data.Dates hiding (month)
+import Data.Time
+-- parseTimeM True defaultTimeLocale "%d %B %Y" "12 January 2016" :: Maybe UTCTime
 
+--https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.9.0.0/docs/Data-Maybe.html figure out how to optionally match either with hh:mm:ss or without it
+--https://hackage.haskell.org/package/time-1.7/docs/Data-Time-Format.html
+--http://hackage.haskell.org/package/time-1.7/docs/Data-Time-Clock.html#t:UTCTime
+--https://hackage.haskell.org/package/time-1.7/docs/Data-Time-Format.html
+--https://lotz84.github.io/haskellbyexample/ex/time-formatting-parsing
+-- 
+
+
 import Text.Pandoc.Definition hiding (Format)
 import Text.Pandoc.Options          (def)
 import Text.Pandoc.Readers.LaTeX    (readLaTeX)
@@ -53,10 +62,10 @@
 month :: Int -> Month
 month n = toEnum (n-1)
 
-displayDate :: DateTime -> String
-displayDate (DateTime y m d h mins s) =
-  intercalate " " [ show d, show (month m), show y ]
+displayDate :: UTCTime -> String
+displayDate t = formatTime defaultTimeLocale "%-d %B %Y" t
 
+
 postsToHtml :: [Post] -> Html
 postsToHtml xs = do
   ul ! A.id "blog-posts" $
@@ -78,33 +87,40 @@
 getOutputExtension Markdown = ".html"
 
 -- data FileName = FileName { getFileName :: String, getExtension ::  }
-newtype Title = Title { getTitle :: String } deriving (Show, Eq, IsString, ToMarkup)
+newtype Title = Title { getTitle :: String } 
+  deriving (Show, Eq, IsString, ToMarkup)
 
 data Post = Post
   { fileName    :: String  -- TODO make this more typed
   , postTitle   :: Title
-  , postDate    :: DateTime
+  , postDate    :: UTCTime
   , format      :: Format
   , pd          :: Pandoc
-  }  deriving (Show, Eq)
+  }  
+  deriving (Show, Eq)
 
 instance Ord Post where
   compare = compare `on` postDate
 
--- | Relative dates aren't supported by BlaTeX (it makes no sense for a post to
--- always be written "yesterday", a specific date should be given) However
--- parsing the date requires the current datetime to be given to parse relative
--- dates.
---
--- Originally I went through the IO hurdles of getting current datetime, but
--- that introduced unnecessary side-effects so this is just a cleaner function
--- to parse absolute dates. (It will give nonsensical results for relative
--- dates: use carefully!)
---
--- I also wanted to stick with strings for error messages, so this just shows
--- the ParseErrors from parseDate
-parseAbsoluteDate :: String -> Either String DateTime
-parseAbsoluteDate = first show . parseDate mempty
+parseAbsoluteDate :: String -> Either String UTCTime
+parseAbsoluteDate s = case parseAbsoluteDate' s of
+  Just a -> Right a
+  Nothing -> Left "Date does not match valid formats"
+
+
+{--
+Valid formats:
+6 January 2012
+January 6, 2012
+9:47AM 6 January 2012
+9:47AM January 6, 2012
+--}
+parseAbsoluteDate' :: String -> Maybe UTCTime 
+parseAbsoluteDate' s = foldr (<|>) Nothing results  
+  where
+    results = map ($ s) options
+    options = map (parseTimeM True defaultTimeLocale) formats
+    formats = ["%-d %B %Y", "%B %-d, %Y", "%-l:%M%p %-d %B %Y", "%-l:%M%p %B %-d, %Y"]
 
 getMeta :: (Meta -> [Inline]) -> Pandoc -> Either String String
 getMeta f (Pandoc m _) = case f m of