At least I got my potato back:
Not quite in the same realm, but for my first NaNo, my whole story centered around an object that I couldn't picture and that had writing on it, but I didn't know what.
Heh...as I recall, I ended up having one character spend a bunch of time working on a translation, to give myself more time to work out the details. And did a lot of scribbling questions to myself in the margins to give my brain a nudge, hoping something would click eventually. That's one benefit to hand writing, I guess.
At least I got my potato back: