>>Mike, you can buy fares that allow free-of-charge changes, but they're expensive. The Expedia fare classes are rigidly inflexible with steep costs for any sort of deviation. The airlines would say that having earned so little for the fare they need to create a disincentive for any sort of additional service load, including schedule changes.
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>>FWIW I managed to visit 13 states in 11 days a couple of weeks ago. I try to fly Star Alliance, meaning United and US Air inside the US. Also I flew Southwest for a couple of legs, American for one leg and AirTrans in and out of Florida. Generally flights were full, meaning airlines don't need to improve their service to retain/attract customers. Chicago to Heathrow was not full. In fact it was so empty that paying extra for a good seat was a waste of $ because everybody on the plane had plenty of room.
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>Thanks, John. I will check them out. My return flight to Chicago on Friday is rebooked (bend over) and I have a decent reservation for May 22nd and 25th. Next week is looking really bad everywhere I have checked. I am brainstorming about all kinds of things, including driving my car back down here next weekend. I'm not going to make a lot of money on this job spending $700 a week on airfare and rental cars.

Is telecommuting an option maybe one week a month?