As a follow up to my earlier post, the "preference files" that I deleted are discussed in the following, very long thread.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1730909&tstart=0
After reading a bunch of the stuff, I deleted the preferences.plist and com.apple.airport.preferences files. I had to re-enter my network settings but it was worth it for me. Although the original thread was related to a security update, I figured I had corrupted the preference files. Apparently that was the case. Although it has only been about six days, I have had zero problems with the Mac connecting after sleep.