George from Easy Contact Forms was nice enough to provide this solution to the domain trimming / relative image url problem.
Go to the Settings->Editor->TinyMCE Settings and add
, relative_urls : false, remove_script_host: false
to the end of the js string. the end should look like
theme:”advanced”, relative_urls : false, remove_script_host: false}
do not forget to click the reload button after you make this change
Another option is to just turn TinyMCE off at all.
Looks like my host had an issue with the MX records on my domain. The notification now works. The other items are minor, but would be great to have working. All in all, this plugin is spectacular now that the notification works.