Crazy work and crazy relaxation

It's almost 2:30 am. I just got done working out and now I should be going to bed, but I don't really want to.

This week has been pretty crazy. On Monday we went in for a meeting to get some revisions from the first phase of the big project we're working on, we found out some bad news about a shifting schedule. We've got a lot, lot, lot to do in a short amount of time... Even more than we thought, and even shorter than we thought.

Luckily, we had massages scheduled after the meeting. Lindsay had given me the Total Body Elixir Vichy Treatment at Juut. I wasn't sure what that was, but I was game.

It was, and I quote, "a hot oil hair treatment and scalp massage. A facial cleanse, full body exfoliation with smoothing body polish, and foot massage get you ready for your massage treatment. Massage with oil on the front of your body is followed by your vichy water massage on the back of our body. The finishing touch is an overall moisture application to leave you soft and smooth."

It was awesome, basically. It started out with me changing into a robe and slippers, then going into this massage room/bathroom. There was a massage table, but it had gutters on it and towels. There were 5 or 7 jets hanging from the ceiling above the table, and a big hose attached to the wall.

The first stuff was pretty standard, with oils and massages and stuff. Then I was scrubbed head to toe, front to back, with some abrasive salt exfoliation stuff. It felt like really coarse, sharp beach sand and kind of hurt, but also felt really good.

Then I was rinsed off with a large, fairly high pressure hose. It was dark and candle lit in the room, and I had my face buried in the massage table, but it felt like waves on a beach.

Once that was done, the shower started. The jets above me turned on one by one, and soon I was basically in a sensory deprivation chamber. The water pummeled my entire body, and the sound was so loud it was the only thing you could hear. It sounded like a massive rain storm. I couldn't see anything and it felt like I had a 40 pound blanket covering my entire body, but a blanket filled with bugs that was constantly shifting. In a good way.

Before we began, my masseuse set some ground rules. People are known to get claustrophobic in a vichy water massage. If I was uncomfortable, I should raise my hand because it's too loud to hear with all the water running.

I was fine, but I did have a few moments of near-panic or suffocation. A few times I had to lift myself up just to breathe, because my chest has so much pressure on it. I couldn't see, hear or even tell if my masseuse was around sometimes. She would come over and adjust my towels, or shampoo my hair (yes, this was a super-pamper treatment).

But I mentioned feeling like I was in a sensory deprivation chamber because at one moment, I started to realize I had no idea how long I had been under that water. As far as I knew, it could have been 5 minutes or an hour. I started to get a little worried, thinking what if she fell over and died and I didn't know and I was just sitting here under this water and I'd never get up until the hot water ran our or I turned into such a prune I couldn't stand it?

Obviously everything was fine, but for a split second, I was convinced I was in big trouble.

My description might sound terrible, but it's not. It's awesome. It's an hour and a half of totally crazy, relaxing, rejuvenating bliss.

After it was over, my masseuse covered helped me get into my robe and slippers, then draped a massive, heavy blanket over my head. She took me to a waiting area and wrapped me in two more blankets, so only my face was peeking out. She gave me water and tea and left me for 20 minutes.

She said that I couldn't leave or go outside until my blood-pressure had normalized, as the treatment does some crazy stuff. So I sat swaddled in blankets until it was time to go.

Lindsay had only gotten a normal massage, since they only have one area to do vichy treatments. She was pretty jealous when I met back up with her.

From there it was back to the real world. We went back to the studio and made a game-plan for the week. We've got too much to do and it's a bit scary.

We went home at a normal time, since we didn't have the dogs along, and we spent most of the night working, although I took a break to play Battlefield with Ryan and Chris C.

The rest of the days have been less wonderful.

I went to meeting the following day to get brought up to speed with how we should proceed with production files for a project, and it was a long, confusing meeting. Not because the process should be that confusing, because I don't think it is, but because the client was not prepared in the slightest and used examples that were flat-out wrong.

So it was like "this one has this right... but ignore the rest. this one shows how this should be... except it shouldn't be like this at all." Whatever, I got it. Other designers seemed to bit a bit worried, though.

We cranked on stuff until the wee-hours of the morning ever since. Last night we were at the studio until 2:30 or 3. And tonight we were there until 12:30. Which is why I decided to work out when I got home.

I thought I was starting out the new year well by hitting the gym right away, but now we're in think middle of so many deadlines we only have time to work and sleep.

Sucky. But we've made major progress, and I think by the end of tonight we closed the book on a few projects that have been looming for a while. So it feels good. Things are manageable. It'll be a few more days (or weeks?) of late nights, but it's moving in the right direction.