When the temperature is near zero and your fingers turn to ice just walking to your car, it’s nice to know there are a few places around town to make you feel warm all over.</p><p>A quick fix is lunch at Dixon’s Famous Chili, 209 S. M-291. Customers order it “juicy,” “soupy,” “dry,” plain, with spaghetti or with a foot-long dog.</p><p>“We come here all the time,” customer Jerry Sloan of Lakewood said, “all year long.”</p><p>But he agrees that it’s better on days like Wednesday when he and his wife, Jan Sloan, ate lunch and the temperature was 13 degrees.</p><p>“It just warms you up,” Jan said. “Chili in the summer doesn’t mix too well. I love it on a cold day.”</p><p>Dressed in a grey hooded Missouri sweatshirt, Lee’s Summit resident Brett Lyon cozied up to the counter for a chili dog. An assistant principal at Brittany Hill Middle School in Blue Springs, Lyon had the day off due to school closings for the cold temperatures. Chili on a snow day just seemed right.</p><p>“It just kind of warms you up,” Lyon said. “I guess you kind of crave it.”</p><p>Once the craving is satisfied, Hearth and Home, 555 N.W. Blue Parkway, awaits with seven burning displays. Owner Virgil Horne said the showroom gets to about 80 degrees by noon. It’s hovered around 80 in Miami, Fla., all week.</p><p>“When the temperature is like this, we get everything fired up,” Horne said. “If I get everything fired up in here I get 300,000 BTUs.”</p><p>He doesn’t mind people coming in to simply get warm either – he expects it when it gets this cold.</p><p>“The bus stop is across the street,” Horne said. “People come in all the time, ‘I just want to get warm,’ and they wait here for the bus.”</p><p>To forget it’s winter all together, grab a swimming suit and head to the Legacy Park Community Center. The Aquatics Center contains a 141-foot long figure-eight water slide, spray features, a large play area, a zero-depth beach entrance, four 20-yard lap lanes, a current channel and a hot tub.</p><p>Greg Brenner of Lee’s Summit, a teacher at Alta Vista Charter School in Kansas City who also had Wednesday off because of school closings, took advantage of the lap lanes to keep in shape. He’s training this winter for the summer triathlon season.</p><p>“You still smell Chlorine. It kind of smells like summer just a little bit,” Brenner said of swimming on a snow day. “It's a fun thing to do on an unexpected day off.”</p><p>However, for those who happily consider winter a swimsuit-free season, there is a coffee cart and fireplace in the lobby. There’s a good view of the pool and the work-out facility from there.</p><p><i>To reach Journal reporter Julie Scheidegger, call 816-282-7016, or e-mail jscheidegger@lsjournal.com</i>