Vista - Trouble opening/saving attachments as .doc and .pdf files

I have Vista Home Premium and Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1 installed on my
notebook pc. When I go to open a .pdf attachment Word tries to open it, even
though the default says Adobe Reader 8.1 and vice versa. My work around is to
save the files and then right click and use "open with" and manually choose
the right program. Further, when I save the .pdf file it appears as a Word
file (i.e., the icon looks like a Word file) even though in "properties" it
says it is a .pdf and vice versa. This problem started in the last week or
so. I didn't alter anything that I know of. Any suggestions or hints as to
what the hell is going on?

A little late in posting a solution but it may help others who Google for this issue:

Go to start and type in the search box for Default Programs. Open that and go to "Associate a file type or protocol with a program". Select .pdf or whatever file you are having the issue with, open that and browse to the default you wish to set or restore, you will have to perhaps go down a couple of layers in the search and maybe set an .exe file or whatever, but it should be fairly obvious. Any problems and you can restore to what it was initially and try again.