When you become a RAW photographer, you become the decision maker for these considerations in post processing, where many had been decided by the camera for the JPEG:

1. Sharpening
2. Noise Reduction
3. Color Saturation
4. Exposure adjustments, general
5. Contrast, general
6. Highlights and shadows
7. White Balance
8. Lens corrections
9. Color space
10. Pixel resolution for target image share platforms
11. Disk storage (for the larger files)
12. Image file back-up strategy (for those larger files)

You don't have to understand all these issues, but when you do, you'll be much more successful as a RAW photographer.

You might resist the peer pressure of the photography club; and instead, consider whether a higher quality lens coupled with expert-level shooting technique yields more tangible results as compared to more computer time after shooting.

You would have been better off getting a D850. Even with the FTZ adapter, A/F performance is mediocre with legacy motorized lenses - and not at all possible with non-motorized lenses (AF-D, etc). Your research results were not wrong, but incomplete - AF-S and AF-P lenses will AF, but not as crisply as on a D850. AF and AF-D lenses will not autofocus. Nikon will not be introducing an adapter to allow The Z7 to drive AF and AF-D lenses, since the body itself has no internal AF motor to drive the lens. If you look at the mount on an 80-200 F2.8 AF-D you will see a little piece that looks like slot on a screw head. And if you look at the camera side mount on a camera that can AF with that lens, you'll see "male" counterpart - a piece that looks like a screwdriver blade that mates to the screw head. This is the mechanism that drives the AF on the lens. The Z7 lacks the "screwdriver" part.

In learning more of my camera capabilities and at the same time new'ish' to Lightroom, I'm trying the HDR Merge feature. I set the Canon 7ti, for the 3 exposure bracket shots. I, for the time being, shoot in RAW only, since I wasnt really using my jpeg versions anyway. After merging the 3 shots, they look terribly noisy, which I figure, comes from the darker pictures. The question is, should one edit to their best, the 3 original shots first, then merge, or merge the 3 then edit? Would not editing the original 3 take away the 'features' of using 3 different exposures?

There is a shortcut to jump from Lightroom to Photoshop :Command or control E will jump you from Lightroom to Photoshop
Now let’s say you’ve made your changes in Photoshop and you want to get back to Lightroom with your newly improved picture. Here is the important part!

Choose File > Save.
DO NOT choose Save As.
If you change the name of the file it won’t pick up the changes in Lightroom and your workflow is broken.

Go back into Lightroom and you will see your changed file and the original file in your Lightroom Library.
There is no shortcut to jump back because Lightroom does not save files the same way Photoshop does

The Technical Support Chat is way more effective. Go to the Adobe.com site and sign-in with your credentials and find Support and then Contact Us and then the Chat option. When you get connected, just explain you need one of your installed computers released to install your licensed software onto another piece of equipment. They can / will handle. While you wait to be connected to chat in one window, see if you can navigate to your history of purchased software in another window and possibly release that install history yourself.