I have the similar (hopefully benign) obsession. Especially being new and only having one node before this one, I got in the habit of checking it frequently until activity died down. Still in the throes of learning the community here and how it works (and not being really clear on the chatterbox and how the /msg option works either) I should think it would be nice to have a nodelet like this available.

What I have done now though is to create a bookmark in my browser for the nodes I am interested in and that has worked well for me so far. I usually put these bookmarks at the top of my list for easy access and then prune them as I lose interest in a node. (Not that I'd ever really lose interest in anyones' writeups mind you, but I have a limited attention span.)

I'm not sure how well the nodelet would work when one has a lot of writeups active, but then I have the same problem when I have a lot of nodes that I want to review and I just have to be disciplined in pruning them. Perhaps this is one of those questions of balancing the handwork in pruning vs. the time of someone more expert than myself in creating such a nodelet?