Adventures in Deadheading

I just completed a week of flying Milwaukee to Indy and back. No snow in Milwaukee, which was strange compared to last year this time. In early February, both airports closed and I got to go home last year. We had a few flurries, and one deicing incident in Indy this week, but nothing horrific. The deadheads were the only newsworthy story.
This trip starts with a Monday morning deadhead to Milwaukee, which I hate. I much prefer to get there Sunday night and try to get a good night's sleep before beginning a week of flying on Monday night. No such luck with this one. I got up very early at home (2:45 am) to catch the 6:00 American flight through DFW. While in the bathroom, my cellphone rang and the polite lady from American wanted to know if I'd be willing to take a later flight through Chicago instead b/c the DFW-MKE leg was oversold. Remember, I have to check in by 8 hours prior to showtime in Milwaukee (around 9:30 pm), but there's a loophole. If you're within 100 miles of the layover city, you can legally check in. The company figures you can, in the worst case, rent a car and be there by showtime if you have 8 hours and are within 100 miles. So, even though this deadhead arrived in Milwaukee later, I could actually check in sooner when we landed in Chicago, and I waited for my connection. A quick check of the weather confirmed no delays, so I took the offered first class upgrade and things went very smoothly. I still got to the airport in ABQ in time to get back on the original flight, in case some unforeseen problem arose, which meant an extra hour of drool time wasted in an airport.
Then, last night, I woke from my hub turn nap in Indy ready to fly the last live leg back to MKE to find that they had "changed gauge" on the flight (meaning our jet was too small for the amount of freight they needed to move so they stuck an Airbus on it), and we were to go to the hotel in Indy and then deadhead home from there. Flurry of activity...get new deadhead ticket, cancel new company ticket which would take me to Memphis instead of ABQ, cancel old deadhead ticket from MKE to ABQ, cancel pre-reserved shuttle from MKE hotel to passenger terminal. Wait as sec, I made that reservation for the wrong day and time anyway! It was a good thing, I guess, that things went the way they did, b/c otherwise I'd be standing there in the MKE hotel's lobby wondering where my ride to the airport was to go home. By the time my sleep-starved brain had figured it out, I might have missed my flight home!
So now I'm cooling my heels at DFW on a 3 hour layover b/c the connections were not good from Indy. Man I hate commuting!!! Boise next week.