So it appears that my Mist wallet hadn't fully sync'd to a node, yet it produced a Etherbase ID for me to use.. I dumped the address into Kraken for a withdrawal, and realized after sending things over that the Mist wallet was still looking for peers.. I went to bed and let the wallet sync overnight. Upon waking up the Ether base ID has changed, and the funds aren't received from Kraken.. Are these funds lost forever or stuck somewhere I can get to?
Running Mist on Windows machine
You could possibly search ethchain.org by address to find (or not find) the transaction record. Also check your ethereum wallet keystore directory - your key might be there (on mac Library/Ethereum/keystore). Good luck - hope it wasn't a large sum!
Ok, crisis averted... Whew..
What we ended up doing was uploading the key to https://www.myetherwallet.com/ then sending the funds back over to Kraken until my nerves settle, lol.
I did raise a comment with the Mist developer on the fact that many non devs may not have a need for such an easily accessible test area that could trigger more impatient folks than me to think their funds have vanished, when in reality they are parked in a key the wallet is not pointing to..
Lesson learned, and thank you everyone for your help.
