In regards to R - If you are on your friends page, click on "previous" and then look at the link at the top of your page, you'll see that it says:

http://tkp.livejournal.com/friends?skip=10

Every time you click "previous" you will go back 10 more posts. So if I've been gone for a few days, instead of clicking "previous" multiple times, I'll manually manipulate the link, replacing the 10 with 50 or 100 or 170 or whatever finally gets me back to where I left off.