A blinking check engine light only occurs when the engine computer detects mis-fires in one or more of the cylinders. If the mis-fires are severe enough to cause damage to the catalytic converter, the check engine light starts flashing at a rate of once per second. Once the computer senses that the mis-fires have stopped it stops the flashing and lights the check engine light solid, so as to indicate a problem has occured.

Causes of major mis-fires can be bad fuel, fouled spark plugs, or other malfunctions in the engine's ignition system. Also on extremely rough roads, the computer can be fooled into thinking it's mis-firing, but this is extremely rare.

In playing around in your engine compartment, did you inadvertently mess with any of the wiring to the spark plug coils (red squares on valve covers)? Others items to check would include damage to the mass airflow sensor (don't ever "touch" the thin wires in the MAF) and leaks in the intake track past the MAF, caused by vacuum hoses disconnected or the intake tube not being seated on the throttle body.

I would certainly retrieve the trouble codes from the computer and see what they say. Do not attempt to reset the computer until you retrieve the codes, or you'll never know what happened.

Contrary to popular belief, the check engine light cannot tell you of many major engine malfunctions (one person wanted to know why it didn't come on before they threw a rod), it only keeps tabs on the functioning of the engine in regards to emission related function.

That's my 2 cents, I hope it helps.

Kirk