Is there a free program available which allows me to add my personal notes to an email I received ?

This is required because it reminds me on what my response was since I might talk directly to the email sender instead of replying using email to the original sender. The personal note would serve as a record on the content of my response, date, time and method of response, etc.

Here is what I am doing currently if I want to add my own personal notes to an email message:
- I open the respective e-mail, and use 'reply' to add my own notes (in different font & colour), it can be a general one-liner (for the entire email), or can be a few lines along the text of the original email.
- I then address the 'reply' to myself (to a separate email account that I set up in Live/Hotmail or Gmail) and send the reply there after changing the subject line on the original email to "PNOTE" to replace the "FW" etc (which Live/Hotmail or Gmail may add to all replies).