Connection to localhost dramatically slower than to network server

I have an Excel VBA application that connects to a SQL Server 2008 R2 database through ADODB. When I'm on the network at work, the connection is almost instantaneous. When I am at home working with a local copy of the database, the connection takes about 5 seconds. At first I thought the performance hit had to do with the queries, and even posted a question on Stackoverflow with that incorrect assumption: https://stackoverflow.com/q/10467876/138938 The connection is just as slow locally whether I specify "localhost" or a ".". It seems like my code is having a hard time resolving where exactly my localhost is. Is there something I should do with my hosts file or some other setting that I can modify to speed up my connection on my local machine? What other thing should I look at to troubleshoot? Thanks!