Photo by Matt Artz on Unsplash
Have you ever heard somebody say something or someone threw a monkey wrench into it or maybe just a wrench into it? Here’s the meaning for that phrase from the free dictionary. “Sabotage or frustrate a project or plans, as in The boss threw a monkey wrench into our plans when he said we’d have to work Saturday. This transfer of industrial sabotage-that is, throwing a tool inside machinery-to mess things up dates from the early 1900s.”
But think about how throwing a wrench into those first industrial machines as factories got going in the early 1900s would have really messed things up. My husband actually has a personal story about somebody throwing a wrench into something. He bought a tractor online a few years ago and it kept having problems. He got a tractor mechanic to come work on it here on the farm. When they tore into the parts that weren’t working right, they found a wrench. Not sure if it was left by accident or intentionally, but it did throw a wrench into the workings of the tractor.
I took part in a Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt this weekend. It was great fun, but it’s about over now. Only a few more hours, but you might have time to race through before midnight Mountain Time if you go now to Stop #1 but even if you don’t race through it in time to enter the giveaways, you can still enjoy all the great posts. I did.
I’m also heaving a big sigh of relief that my site didn’t throw a monkey wrench into the scavenger hunt. The way the hunt works is that one post links to another and then another like a huge chain. Well, if one link of that chain breaks, big time trouble for all those doing the hunt. This is maybe my fourth time to participate in one of these events. I suppose the first one went okay, but then…
One year we had guests who did the posts on our sites and then we were guests on another site. My guest had made this wonderful video for her post. It was cute. The only problem was that when several hundred people came racing through the hunt to watch that video, my website blew up and couldn’t handle the traffic. Link broken. Thank goodness my website maintenance guy was paying attention and knew when the site went down. Somebody turned the video into a YouTube video and all was well since they don’t use as much gigabytes or whatever. That’s probably not the right word, but the website didn’t crash anyway. So, whew! My link was back up and I got to entertain scavenger hunters on my site again.
But then…
The next time I joined the hunt, can you believe that on the day the hunt was supposed to start, a squirrel decided to commit suicide by climbing into the transformer on our electric pole? No electricity. The electric company workers showed up pretty quickly and I’m feeling relieved until they decide our meter hasn’t been working right and we weren’t getting a proper amount of electricity into the house. No wonder the lights were dim once they came back on. It was a total brown out. They decided to fix it, but had to call more workers to bring more supplies. While I was glad they were fixing it, I had to wonder how this could have happened right on the day of the scavenger hunt. They did get it fixed and again I’m breathing easier.
But then…
Right in the middle of the busiest time of the scavenger hunt as readers are chasing down those clues, including the one I had on my blog post, the powers that be that handle the registration of websites, etc. picked that very day to take my site down because I hadn’t updated my e-mail address. I didn’t know I had to update my e-mail address. The one on record had been nixed for years. So, they were right that if you need a current e-mail address on your domain (website address) then I was out of date. The thing was why did they have to pick that very day to take me down? Without notice. Of course, they had sent notices. To that old e-mail I hadn’t used for years. No response from me and down I went with no earthly idea why. The one day all year that I especially needed a working website! Sigh. Worse, it was late on Friday. No way I could get in touch with the powers that be to get it fixed or so it seemed. After some crazy telephone calls with Lisa Bergren, who sponsors the hunts, and Jane Kirkpatrick who had what was supposed to be my link on her site, they patched the chain around my site. Then amazingly enough, my website maintenance man, maybe I should say magician man, helped me find a way to contact those powers that be even on the weekend and the next day I was back online.
So you might understand why I was a little nervous about joining in with the scavenger hunt fun this time. I decided going in that if something on my site threw a monkey wrench into the fun, I would never try it again. But no monkey wrench (as long as I make it a few more hours). Only smooth sailing and fun.
Thank you all so much for joining in with the fun too.
If you did the scavenger hunt this year or have done one in the past, what did you like best about taking part?