other8026 Thanks. I will give the update another shot, but at the moment I am just trying to wait for a time when I am a bit less phone dependent to experiment. I believe I may have actually been the first to have success sideloading, at least since this recent update issue. To be specific though, I had to use a process very similar to the one below, since my phone would not boot to a point where I could use the traditional adb sideload.
https://www.droidviews.com/ota-updates-adb-sideload-recovery/
My reason for posting again is threefold:
If my experience is indicative, sideloading may be a temporary fix.
If there are useful data points I can gather for the devs, I'd be happy to try
Just brainstorming, I'm generally interested if anyone knows why this is happening now and why it seems to be recurring. I realize that the root issue seems to be with the Pixel 7 firmware, but recent updates do seem to have brought out that issue. That, or I just have bad luck, which is a possibility.