Thank you for the kind thoughts everyone. It looks like all my financials are now safe! Ta-Da! My laptop is in the hands of the Best Buy Geek Squad and I was assured that all data will be intact and only the bad stuff will be cleaned up. At some point one just needs to trust someone. I do have a silly moment to share. I teach part-time at a university so when this happened I contacted our technology help folks and oh, they were so nice, kind and understanding. But... and this is the silly part. They would be happy to schedule a time to clean my compute after the last week of classes and exam week because they are busy now. What? I am a faculty member who is teaching and I need access to all of my classes and data on my laptop to finish the semester for my students! Doubt the students would consider this an appropriate solution. I laughed at them on the phone, poor manners I know, and said that was not acceptable and said good bye. Off to the Geek Squad I went. Fingers crossed that I get a call from GS by the week-end.
Yes, if you are using lighter weight envelopes tape the edges. After a year of taping, I gave up using them and use the 6X8 brown envelopes and only tape the flap down. If you are using the larger envelopes with the metal closure, take it off the metal clasp. My post office folks say that they tend to get stuck in the machinery that sorts the mail. I search out envelopes without the metal closure at the Dollar Store. They come in packages of either 4 or 6. To date never had a problem.
Enjoy your day everyone.