coincidence vs synchronicity

Is there a difference between coincidence and synchronicity? Is the willingness to believe in synchonicity just an example of the pattern-making monkey-brain wanting to create meaning where there is none?

I just thanked Nick again for introducing me to Cynthia, even though it was not intentional on his part. I stopped by his place uninvited and she was there. I am beginning to think she and I were meant to meet, and I am wondering if he was just the vehicle for that meeting, or... what??

I've met very few women like her outside Academia. And here we connected, out of the blue, in Nic's livingroom. It snapped between us, this recognition: I know you. It was like... that ineffable, numinous, synchronistic moment of big-picture clarity when a koan makes sense, when everything is simultaneously called into question and cast into sharp relief.

I asked him if he knew how rare women like us are, and he said yes. I told him it has created this metacognitive fascination in me, the question, "What is it about you that drew the two of us into your life?"
He said, "I am big enough to have my own gravitational field?"
I grinned and said, "Heh, I was thinking more on the quantum level--top quarks and bottom quarks perhaps."
Which made him laugh, and then he said, "You certainly have 'charm' and she does exhibit 'spin'."
And I said, "Oh, and which of us has the p-brane?"
Which made him laugh again and threaten to spank my ass for even joking about being pea-brained.
I said, "What? How are you going to Planck mass?"
And he said "All in Planck time."
Damn. He's always got a come back. But he would spell it cum back. I know he would.

It is a strange and wondrous world out there.