Bitcoin client crashed during transaction and now displays wrong balance

[glitch003]

Well I was trying to send 5 BTC to Bitcoinica and my bitcoin client crashed due to not being able to find GrowlHelper.App on my mac.  So, now my client says I have 12 BTC but I know I have 17 in the addresses if I view them on blockchain.info. 

Importing the public/private key pairs into Electrum should show the correct balance, right?  Is there a way to refresh my balance in the regular bitcoin client?

If I didn't understand bitcoin, losing money like this would scare me. But I know that the funds are still present in my addresses at blockchain.info.  Anyway I'm surprised the client records the transaction in it's database before it has actually been executed.  That just seems wrong to me.  Can someone more informed explain why this happens?

Thanks!

[glitch003]

How odd, the transaction seems to have gone through about 6 hours after I placed it.  It now shows up on blockchain.info as spent, but not yet confirmed.  Why would this happen?