Question about Outlook Express

I use Outlook 2011 to collect email from a Network Solutions hosted IMAP mail service.  Over the last several weeks, I've noticed issues with mail being picked up by Outlook HOURS after it arrived.

In troubleshooting this, I noticed that, despite the fact that a new message is sitting in my Inbox, I cannot convince Outlook to go get it.  Right-clicking to bring up the contextual menu on the Inbox and then selecting "Synchronize Now" does nothing.  Using the "Send And Receive All" does nothing.  Heck, even "Repair Folder" does nothing.  Sometimes quitting Outlook and restarting it does the trick, but not always.

I have tried changing the time in the "Sync all IMAP folders every ___ minutes".
I have tried checking and unchecking the "Use IMAP IDLE if the server supports it" option.
I have tried changing the time in the "Refresh server connection after ___ minutes".

I have verified that Outlook 2010 for Windows operates properly, thereby eliminating server-side issues.

I have deleted the IMAP account in Outlook, repaired the database, and then added it back.  After the initial sync, the problem reappears.

I have created a new user in Mac OS X and then launched Outlook from there and the problem persists.

I have installed a fresh copy of Mac OS X (Lion) and Office 2011 on another Mac and have verified the problem there.

I created a new email account in our Network Solutions hosted IMAP service and have verified the problem with the new account through all of the permutations above.

I am running the latest version of Mac OS X Lion (not Mountain Lion) and Outlook 14.2.3

The one thing I did notice, through all of the above tests, including the ones with the new email account, is Outlook is doing some sort of IMAP communications with the server even when Send And Receive All is not set to run, and even when all of the "sync" options are turned off.  According to the log (yes, I did have logging turned on), the following shows up every 4 minutes whether I have Outlook syncing or not:

[   204049us, d      6885us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: Engine[IMAP folder ]: There are 5 potentially modified local records since 1/1/1904
0:0:0 [159360480]
[   204049us, d         0us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: Scanning map for required actions
[   204049us, d         0us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: Engine[IMAP folder ]: There are 0 remote records to add locally
[   204049us, d         0us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: Engine[IMAP folder ]: There are 0 changes to push up
[   204049us, d         0us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: Engine[IMAP folder ]: There are 0 changes to pull down
[   204049us, d         0us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: Engine[IMAP folder ]: There are 0 conflicting records
[   204049us, d         0us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: Engine[IMAP folder ]: There are 0 local records to push up
[   204049us, d         0us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: Engine[IMAP folder ]: There are 0 local records to delete
[   204049us, d         0us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: Engine[IMAP folder ]: There are 0 remote records to delete
[   204055us, d         6us] Outlook Exchange Web Services: ---------- Engine: Ending "IMAP folder " Sync [time:8/31/2012 2:12:43 [216514212]] ----------

All of the other log entries are of the form "[IMAP folder INBOX]" or "[IMAP folder Sent Items]".  I do not know what folder this is.  The above is from my efforts with a brand new email account.  The only folders that are automatically there are Inbox, Trash, Sent Items and Draft.  Outlook adds Drafts and Junk E-mail.  I added nothing, nor made any changes to the folder structure.  I can see no other folders through an email web interface, the Folder Browser in Outlook, or through any other mechanism.

**SO WHAT IS THIS NON-EXISTENT IMAP FOLDER THAT OUTLOOK KEEPS SYNCING?**

I am convinced that this is the key to the issue, since that 1/1/1904 date just smells bad.  (and, yes, I have reset the NVRAM and the PRAM on my computer and this shows up on both computers, so it's very unlikely to be a hardware issue).

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.