Today while watching the Shamu show I laughed and laughed at the people in the lower half of the audience who were getting soaked by the giant killer whale slapping his tail on the water. "Ho, ho, ho," I said, "that's what you get for not reading the signs that said 'splash zone.' " The whole thing seemed like slapstick to me, though I thought that when I return (hopefully) with my brother and sister in law, I'll have to make sure we all sit up really high.

Later I rode the Atlantis Discover water coaster. This has an amusing feature at the bottom of the ride where you can pay a quarter to shoot a geyser of water at the people who've just come down a big ramp. This is amusing if you're about 8, which I think is the age of the boy who said, "Ha hah! That was me! I got you!" as I rounded the bend, fresh with water on my face from hitting the bottom of the coaster and then even wetter thanks to him.

This was entirely surpassed at the end of the next ramp, which got me so wet that I had water in my shoes. I hate, hate, hate walking around in wet shoes, and these are also made of leather and the one nice pair I've brought with me. Yuck. This, I thought, was my penance for laughing at the Shamu audience; walking home in a nasty pair of soaking wet shoes (not to mention that I was now sitting in a puddle).

So I got off of the ride, and it started to sprinkle, and I grumbled a bit more about the karmic nature of it all and headed off to get a few more quarters so I could squish some pennies for me and scarlettina (Seaworld takes this whole penny squishing thing really seriously - I think I saw five machines and I'm sure there are more).

Then God hit the flusher on the heavenly toilet and I really got some rain, truly epic quantities of day ending, theme-park-clearing water. Rather delightfully, it was all bathtub warm and I had a brolly with me (the only person at Seaworld who wasn't an employee who did, I believe), so after watching it huddled under a roof with other hesitant tourists, I took off my shoes, put them in a plastic bag, and marched out of the park. I finally took off my socks, too, after crossing the parking lot, and had the delightful experience of walking through sopping wet grass in my bare feet. It was like being in Arizona again and strolling around Tempe after a good monsoon rain had come through. The rain even stopped before I got back to the hotel, which I'm pretty happy about.

When I got to my room, I realized that even though my head was dry, I now needed to change all of my clothes, as I was soaked through. My shoes are now drying on the table and I'm going to try for Mexican again and hope for better luck tonight. Report on the entirety of the day later.