I need a new feature in Gmail!

I use Gmail more and more as my primary emailapp for everything I do besides my work (like a weblogmagazine , weblogawards, eventblogs). Since I mail a lot of requests that need some kind of answer or followup I made a label called @waiting in Gmail. This is where I put all my emails that I have send and need an answer from the receiver. Every week or so (..cough…Weekly review checkup…cough…) I check the list and see what’s still out in the open. The great thing about Gmail is that any answer that arrives drops in your mailbox with the label attached to it. So I see immediately the emails I have been waiting for and I can easily remove the label if necessary. But one thing that Gmail misses is an easy way to label a message when sending it. Now I need to go to “Sent Mail” and manually label the message. No big deal, but when I’m on a roll with email (sending 20-30 messages at a time) some might slip through the cracks. So it would be great if you could label a message directly when you are in “writing-mode” in Gmail. Not when you’re in “I-just-sent-the-mail-let’s-relax-mode”. So maybe someone from Google is reading this blog and might see this desparate plea for more comfort and ease-of-use in a otherwise excellent mailapp!