Vanishingpoint wrote:
Here's the bottom line:
I updated to OSX 10.8.3 while the VM was running. IMHO, that's what broke the VM. The VMDK was corrupted and beyond repair.
To be perfectly blunt, one is not suppose to preform an OS update such as this while other non-OS related applications are running! 
As a general rule before preforming an upgrade such as this I do a clean boot and do not open anything other then invoking the Software Update. I also usually download the Combo Update and apply that when dealing with point increase updates of the OS.
Luckily, I had a Time Machine/Time Capsule backup of the VM and was able to use it.
A word of advice: Always share your files with your host (Mac). In so doing your documents will be safe, even if your VM crashes and you have no backup. Try to not be in the latter situation.
Just an FYI...
It is a known fact that Time Machine is not 100% reliable backing up/restoring Virtual Machines under all circumstances/conditions. Also backing up Virtual Machines via Time Machine is disk/time intensive and wastes a tremendous amount of space for something that may be corrupt and worthless come time to restore it. At a minimum I would exclude Virtual Machines from Time Machine and with the Virtual Machines shutdown, not suspended, and VMware Fusion closed then manually copy the Virtual Machines Package(s) to an alternate location, preferably on to a different physical hard disk. Then keep the User Data that is stored within the Virtual Machine backed up off of the Virtual Machine on a regular basis so as to always have a current User Data Backup. If you have to restore a properly backed up Virtual Machine that is not as current at least you'll have a working Virtual Machine and current User Data to go forward with when you find out your Time Machine Backup of the Virtual Machine fails.