It's been very windy and rainy in Sydney for the past couple of weeks - good for breaking the drought that had reduced the dam level to below 40%, but causing some localised flooding and power outages for around 30,000 houses last week. Today I had to visit a local shopping mall to return some library books that were due. It seems that everyone wanted to go shopping today - the car park was full and it took 15 minutes to find a parking space. When I was leaving a short while later the traffic had gotten even worse. It took 52 minutes to get from the top level of the car park down to the exit! While I was at the library I had to argue about some fines that computer system said were due on the books I returned. Even though we had borrowed them three weeks ago and they were due back today, the computer system had the wrong borrowing dates for them, with one of the books allegedly borrowed back in March! We'd checked that we had no outstanding books or fines when we borrowed these books three weeks ago, so I was certain that they weren't overdue. The librarian agreed to "waive" them $11.20 in fines, but the fine will be recorded as "waived" on their system. In future I'll keep the docket that get printed when we borrow books so I can prove when the books were borrowed.