I love pencils as well. Being a fountain pen nut I'm a little out there on the whole writing instrument thing. But the problem that I have with most pencils nowadays is that they are cheap. It is really, really hard to find good pencils. I tend to stick to mechanical pencils for that reason. The leads tend to be better quality. In fact my preferred instrument for editing papers is a pencil. My grad school advisor did that ... much kinder than red pen!

I actually like the "cheap" feeling of the 48-box of Staples-brand pencils I bought today. In the end, I find mechanical pencils insert a distance to the writing that shouldn't be there. Even the VERY expensive ST Dupont pen I found abandoned in the back of a drawer at my old job is too clunky.

I have also added a Rite in the Rain to my collection of notebooks and they suggest using pencils. That's why I started with them again.

I still have a Fisher Space Pen...but it's at the bottom of my pencil case.