It is time once again for me to grumble about the gym. Yes, I still hate working out with a passion, but that’s not what this post is about.

I’m not at the same gym from three years ago; I joined a different gym in early 2010, and I’ve been going there ever since. Recently, they moved to a new building, which was sorely needed. It’s much bigger, and most importantly of all…there’s a massive parking lot. There were far too many occasions at the old location where I simply had to turn around and leave because the lot was choked with vehicles.

That’s all well and good, but there a few rather irritating issues at this place that need to be worked out. The first issue is the loss of cable channels. The cardio machines at the gym all have built-in televisions, and there’s around fifteen channels available. All of our local broadcast stations are there, plus a few cable channels like ESPN, CNN, and so forth.

A few weeks ago, though, a bunch of the more popular cable channels disappeared. While sweating my ass off on an elliptical machine, watching parts of NCIS on USA or a movie on FX made for a welcome diversion. Now both of those stations are gone along with a few others I enjoyed; in their place are duplicates of the broadcast stations, mindless dreck like MTV, or the goddamned Cooking Channel. Sure, I can still listen to music on my iPod while I’m using the machines, but even then, moving in place for half an hour or more gets extremely boring. The added video entertainment helped me forget how much I hate exercising. I’d watch the news, but given that this is an election year, those channels will soon be inundated with attack ads.

A much more pressing problem is that it’s noticeably warmer in the new building. It’s borderline uncomfortable, but it’s going to get worse: the large windows all face to the west, and there are no shades. Once the days start getting longer, the sunlight will stream directly on to our backs on the cardio machines. The place is going to turn into an Easy-Bake Oven.

I’ve already spoken with the gym staff about these concerns, of course, and they said they’d take my opinions under consideration. Whether that has any effect whatsoever remains to be seen (I feel it’s unlikely).