Ah, triage.  The vast majority of my freelance work these days comes in at the last minute.  Usually on fire.   During a really good week, I may have, oh, three of four days to complete a project.  More often than not though the conversation runs like this:

IM MikeyJoe:  Hey!  U round

IM Me: Yeppers, what's up?

IM MikeyJoe: My AD went to Burning Man, you up for a project?

IM Me:  Sure thing.  Whats the project?

IM MikeyJoe:  Need VZN Banners for product launch.  Emailing u details

**PAUSE FOR EMAIL***

IM Me:  Coolness, that's 15 banner ads?

IM Mikey Joe:  Ya.  We need you to redo the title screen too.

IM Me:  Kay.  What's the deadline?

IM  MikeyJoe:  We need them by 8am, is that okay?

***PAUSE FOR SANITY-CHECK***  (I usually fail these, it's the mark of a freelancer)

IM Me:  Not a problem.  Got game assets?

IM MikeyJoe:  I'll check, one sec.

***PAUSE***

IM MikeyJoe:  Got three dummy-scrns.  Emailing now

IM Me:  k

IM Me: Um.  These are 80x80, got anything bigger?

IM MikeyJoe:  ....  The AD went to Burning Man

IM Me:  Ah.  'K