Jeanette Blalock:
CLASS OF 1983
Clemens High SchoolClass of 1983
Schertz, TX
Jeanette's Story
Life
I moved back to Alaska in '97, with my two kids. I live in the interior, about 350 miles north of Anchorage, in a small town called Delta Junction. I had a third child after moving here.
My oldest, Heather, is now 23. She is married, and living in Seattle with her husband and baby girl. My middle child, Phil, is 16, and finishing his last two years of high school. My youngest, John, is six, and will be starting first grade this year (2005).
I'm single, but have been seeing someone for a year and a half now.
My spare time is spent singing. I perform mainly in Fairbanks, which is 100 miles from Delta. I perform mainly blues, but over the years, have done many types of music. When I lived in Anchorage for two years, I was very active in the music scene there, including a stint for a radio station band.
I love living in Alaska, and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. This has definately become home. One of my favorite things to do here is run the rivers. I also enjoy fishing. We went about a month ago and caught about 30 salmon. Gardening here is great, if you can keep the moose out of the garden. I also enjoy snow machining, unless is really cold. The coldest I've seen here is 70 below zero. Our normal lows, though, are usually 55 to 60 below zero. Anchorage was much warmer than the interior. They very rarely fall below zero. But their summers are very rainy and cool. In the interior, we reach 100 in the summer, but generally stay in the 70s and 80s.
Working on my house takes up a lot of my time, also. When I lived here as a teen, my dad had just bought five acres. I designed an octogon cabin, but then went back to Texas. My dad built the house, but frame, not logs. When he died, he left me the house. Living in a house that's basically round presents some interesting problems. The house was unfinished, so I slowly finish it. Our construction season here is very short, so I get done what I can when I can. I had never seen the house when I moved up, and felt very fortunate to find it already had water, power and septic. Close to half of our population in Delta didn't have utilities when I moved...Expand for more
here. Outhouses are very common here.
That's been changing, though. Delta is currently booming. Out military base, Ft. Greely, had closed. It's now re-opened, and it's the location of the missile defense site that is President Bush's pet project. So we've had thousands of construction workers here. It's a huge project. Our new gas pipeline will be going through Delta, also, so we'll see another jump in population for the construction of that. Our population has doubled since I moved back here. That may not be saying much, though, because we were less than 2,000 to start with.
I've remained best friends with my best friend in high school, Pam Cloud. She came up here to spend time with me awhile back. I also got her into doing inspection work for FEMA a few years ago, and so we got to work in Detroit together. I'm coming to Texas for about a month in September '05, and will get to be there for her birthday. Should be fun.
Workplace
Wow, how to discuss my worklife. It's been varied. My primary profession is as a court reporter, since 1990. I went to school to learn stenography in San Antonio. I then moved to Boston and worked there, and then worked in San Antonio doing reporting until I moved to Alaska. I didn't report for my first couple of years here. I was doing disaster relief for FEMA, and still do on occasion, when I need a break from reporting. They send me to declared disasters, and I perform damage assessments on homes. Pretty exciting work.
When I returned to Delta after living in Anchorage, I took a job for a year on our military base as a safety officer, managing the safety for roughly 250 employees. I also did QC work on our construction projects.
I did a short stint with Alaska Forestry. We had a forest fire here in Delta back in '99, and I took a job as a driver, driving the fire crews out.
I also do medical transcription from time to time. But again, reporting is my primary job. It gets a little stressful sometimes, so I enjoy taking breaks to do something else for awhile when I need to. I'm self-employed as a reporter, so that gives me the freedom to take a break when I need to.
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