OMFG. The Tower strikes! So last night the power went out at 1 am...→[More:]I woke up to a loud 'pow' from the street, and my CPAP machine stopped pumping air -- The power was out. Called the power company, etc. 90 minutes later I was startled awake again by the lights coming on and my CPAP coming to life. A little unsettling, but a good thing.

10 minutes after that I was awakened by an insanely loud buzzing alarm. It sounded like a prison system alarm. I'd never heard anything like it. Completely terrified me and my wife. I thought there must have been some kind of emergency vehicle outside our house, or inside our house.

It turned out to be this little box we'd never noticed on our wall, a smoke detector installed in 1978. Smoke detectors back then apparently had no way to turn them off, so I had to dig around for a screwdriver and yank it out of the wall to unplug it. Even after we settled down from the sheer panic of being awakened like this, we had to sit in the dark and wonder whether there was something wrong with the furnace and we were going to die.

We still don't know why the smoke detector went off, but I blame The Tower...

The Tower is an unsettling card. Fire, lightning, falling on jagged rocks - definitely looks like trouble! Card 16 will not be welcomed by those who dislike change. It represents a sudden, dramatic upheaval or reversal in fortune. Usually change is gradual, giving us time to adapt, but sometimes it is quick and explosive. This is the action of the Tower.

In films, the hero sometimes slaps someone who is groggy or babbling. Having tried everything else, he finally resorts to a sharp sting to snap him out of it. Sudden crises are life's way of telling you to wake up.

(Yes, I know the Tarot is supposed to predict, not cause, the future, but since I don't believe in that anyway, I can blame the card, right?)