Showing Events on a Datepicker with Server-side data - jquery-ui

Question

I have been busy creating a solution to a client that has proven to be a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. I am using the jQuery Datepicker widget to display calendar events (monthly view) from server-side code. Every thing in the following code works EXCEPT the CSS. It is not changing anything and it seems I've tried everything in the world.
A Calendar is shown in month-view on page-load (MVC) and if a user has events the day should have a different background-color. Also, when the user changes month-to-month, the same logic happens (ajax call to server). Again, this all is working well. My directive to change the background color will not.
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function () {
$.expr[":"].exactly = function (el, i, m) {
var s = m[3];
if (!s) return false;
return eval("/^" + s + "$/i").test($(el).text());
};
var currentYear = (new Date).getFullYear();
var currentMonth = (new Date).getMonth();
function getTheData(year, month) {
var theYear = year;
var theMonth = month;
//alert(theYear + ", " + theMonth);
$.post("GetMeSomeData", { year: theYear, month: theMonth }, function(data) {
//cycle through the dates and address the CSS appropriately
var i = 0;
for (i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
$('.ui-datepicker-calendar td a:exactly(' + data[i]['d'] + ')')
.css({ backgroundColor: 'blue' });
}
});
}
$('#date').datepicker({
inline: true,
beforeShowDay: getTheData(currentYear, currentMonth),
onSelect: function (dateText, inst) {
Date.prototype.toString = function () { return isNaN(this) ? 'NaN' : [this.getDate(), this.getMonth(), this.getFullYear()].join('/'); };
d = new Date(dateText);
//alert(d.getDate() + ", " + d.getFullYear());
getTheData(d.getFullYear(), d.getDate());
},
onChangeMonthYear: function (year, month, inst) {
//alert(year + ", " + month);
getTheData(year, month);
}
});
});
</script>