send and receive cell phone text messages with VB

i have a program where every once in a while it produces some data that is of interest to me

what i want is at the moment this data becomes available is to have it send my cell phone a text message, OR, i suppose, have it send a message somewhere in some fashion that i can retreive wit a cell, but the text directly to the cell is best

from there i want to be able to send a text message to the VB program and have the VB program then, upon receipt of the message, take a particular action

maybe i can send the text message to an email address, or something like that, and then every so often i can have VB check that email looknig for my instructions, etc

not sure if that is clear. any ideas are helpful. :)

Google search returned plenty of resources.