Small Swiss Army knife with retractable pen: http://www.swissarmy.com/MultiTools/Pages/Product.aspx?category=executive&product=53031&

Since you only need to write a quick note, this works well. You’d be surprised how long the pen lasts. The replacement only costs $2.50 too.

My only problem is, I normally wear jeans and a t-shirt. The only time I have a top pocket is when I am at work. So, I can carry the notepad in my back pocket, opposite my wallet, but I had to find a pen that is small enough to fit alongside the notepad, preferably one that clips onto the notepad without making it any thicker. I was able to use a standard retractable pen, then make a few loops of tape alongside the binding so I can slide the pen into the tape loops. On the back side of the tape (the place where the pen is going to slide), I didn’t want it to be sticky, so I put another piece of tape over that portion before I put it on the edge of the book. Once it was on, I then reinforced the tape so it doesn’t peel off or get torn. It doesn’t look pretty, but if everything had to be pretty, I would have lost citizenship a long time ago.

What kind of method do you implement for a writing tool?

But have recently replaced it with my Nokia – heck, can’t read my handwriting half the time anyhow.

However, if people MUST use this process of ripping out a page when they’re done and not using both sides, they should hopefully look into getting recycled paper. Or better yet, tree-free paper. I think I might be a bit biased because I work for a company that develops tree-free paper notebooks/journals. But these are MUCH better for the environment then white paper.

A list of places to get organic tree free notebooks are as follows:

http://www.ecopaper.com (i work here!)
http://www.justpaper.com
http://www.rawganique.com/HempPaperProducts.htm

or you can go to ecomall.com and they have a good listing of other paper places. Please help our environment! Everyone can make a difference!