I was enthralled by a flock of pigeons circling in synchronized dance. Some say they are engaged in a highly trained form of exercise.

Others say it's a distracted, repetitive, useless expenditure of energy. That it's set off by an overreaction to some outside stimuli. Hey, they're city birds. They have anxiety.

It had me go back to an age-old question. Is the universe friendly or hostile?

I found parking by Rutherford and 15th within 10 minutes of circling my destination zone. Universe is friendly.

But the 2-hour parking ticket payment machine would not take my chip-embedded credit card. Hmmm, not so friendly?

Deadline for EMV-compliance was October, 2015. Okay, universe is being incredibly unreasonable. It is almost hostile. And those birds were probably having a panic disorder.

As I was putting quarters into the machine, I noticed a message taped to it. A handwritten note telling a fellow New Yorker that the credit card he had unwittingly left in the machine was left with the store's owner across the street.

Universe - friendly indeed.