I think I've sorted out my login woes with nostrgram. Was looking at what was happening on login and realized that often there is _no event at all_ occurring after I click OK to login with nos2x extension.
On a hunch, decided to give the getalby extension a try. Many more steps to configure and the extension support for nostr won't work unless you setup an alby account, but it's more fluid for the login process.
So seems there is a bug or something in nos2x.
And we obviously need more browser extensions supporting nostr logins without requiring accounts on centralized servers