An odd sort of week

Well for one thing it's been a long week and it's not over yet! Actually a long two weeks.
One of our guys was sick last week and then when he came back another had a member of his family taken into hospital very ill. Had to organise for us to shut down overnight so told everyone except the helicopter guys- felt bad for forgetting them. As it was the man in charge of operations was told, as was air traffic control and sorted out next door to cover for us and produce the documents. I was on leave the next day so would have come in if needed but I'd been told not to do that. Then this week the situation had got worse so we had to cover the staff member's shifts. Wouldn't have been a problem as the boss was back up this week so able to cover but after my second night shift he called in sick at about 4 am. The other forecaster was asleep before his scheduled nightshift so it was a while before we could get contact with him.
In the end I've been on nights all week, including the extra four and a half hours on Tuesday morning (ended up being a 16.5 hour shift, although did get to come in a bit later on the next night shift) and I've got tonight on as well. There's a possibility of having to come in over the weekend as well but hopefully someone else will be able to cover that.
Just realised some of you may not know the shift pattern. We work 12 hour shifts from 8 - 8 with 15 minutes of handover each side of the shift, during night shifts I try to catch a bit of time between observations (every hour at ten to the hour) to get some sleep but doesn't always happen and if there's too much work on sleep goes out of the window. Factor in the travel time and I should have enough time between shifts to get some decent kip in, provided no one calls/knocks. I'm not sure how many hours I've worked this week but since 9 pm on Sunday it's been more work than not. Joy.
Thing is, I don't mind doing the extra work, God knows I didn't take this job to just work when I feel like it. We do a job that's quite important to the people we work for, and from the impression I've got from the guys out in Germany, we're doing rather well (working with the Americans, ohh the stories!). I keep getting told by down south that we should shut down and work differently, letting other stations take up the slack but honestly don't think that this would provide the level of cover they need, partly as our briefings have started at five in the morning. So when things go wrong I step up and work.
Wouldn't be so bad if didn't get a recorded delivery, my electricity meter read and two phone calls today while I was trying to sleep. Hence me blogging rather than sleeping at four in the afternoon. Was thinking about hitting the mess tomorrow but don't know about that now. I promised myself I'd have more of a social life this year and the mess is the best place for that at the moment. Meh, don't know what I'm complaining about really, in fact I'm not complaining as such, just grousing. I like my job, I love where I live and work, Be nice to see friends more but I could make more friends up here if I tried harder (or something like that - never been the most outgoing person).
Tash rang up to see if I fancied doing a walk for charity so not I'm in a group climbing An Teallach for the Trail/WaterAid challenge in June. I'll be looking for sponsorship soon, may well hit work for it (corporately, not just the guys in the office) as WaterAid is one of the official charities this year and there's an online system for hitting up you good folks.
I think that at some point in the future I need to get some of you up here and we can go up a few hills.
Right. Buffy, Star Trek, food, Simpsons, work. That's the short term plan, I'll think about a long term one when it becomes a short term one. Only long term one is to get fitter and loose more weight and watch the Terry Pratchett Colour of Magic this Easter (if anyone's up here they're invited over to watch it!). World changing ain't it?