I continued to have problems with my CIDR notation matching the subnet provided by my ISP for my DSL connection… since this didn't appear to make any sense at all, and everything else was working on the firewall, I reconfigured the WAN for my new internet connection (not the old DSL circuit), set my IP to the new IP/29 (as it should be), and put it into production. All is working as it should be now.
As was suggested by others here, and on #pfsense on IRC, this must have been something flaky with my ISP and/or DSL connection. Though I didn't get to the root cause, my DSL circuit is now off-line and everything is working as it should be on the new internet connection. Thanks to everyone for the assistance!