I was scribbling a shopping list in my moleskine this morning with my favorite Pilot G-2 0.5. A bit later I went back to make an addition, and discovered that the pen wasn’t writing anymore. Closer examination revealed that the tiny ball had popped out of the tip, and a little spring-loaded wire was sticking out in its place. Strange! Alas, finding a ball that measures less than one millimeter in diameter in the carpet was utterly hopeless, not to mention the challenge of putting it back, so I gave up after about two seconds.

I grabbed another G-2, and was quite unsatisfied with how it wrote — scratchy with poor ink flow, which probably explains why that particular pen wound up in the drawer in the first place. (I have found that about one out of every four G-2s doesn’t write well.) So I was off to Staples to obtain another package of G-2s. I also grabbed a Dr. Grip while I was there.