yes, good post - i previously reported the settings i found ...
PHP's "date.timezone" is 'DEFAULT'
MySQL's "system time zone" is 'UTC'
MySQL's "timezone" is "America/Chicago" with a time zone (session value) of 'UTC'
MySQL's "session track system variables" contains 'time_zone'
OST's "Default Time Zone" is 'America / New_York'
Because this is a shared host, on SiteGround, i don't have 'full control' and can't do many of the things in that post.
Thanks for the comment though - if i knew what was wrong i wouldn't be here ;-)
miC