Histogram or Light Meter?

Question > I am going to do some shooting this weekend and don’t have a meter. Would you suggest metering with my eyes, then looking at t he histogram and adjusting from there? If so, what is the “ideal” exposure on a histogram. Should the “mountain” be right in the middle, to the right/left etc?

I highly recommend that you pick up an inexpensive digital meter and learn how to use it. You will then end up with the most consistent perfect exposures ever. No more guess-work. There are ways of using a gray card with the histogram but it is time consuming ad if don wrong you will end up with the wrong setting. Using a light meter is much quicker than taking a bunch of exposures and making adjustments after every shot. It lets you focus on other more important things (like poses, background brightness, position of the lights and modifiers, hair strands across face, clothing bunching up, etc…)
I picked up one of these:

(Polaris SPD100 Digital Meter)

Question > Are these “easy” to use?

Yes, extremely easy to use. It is also extremely quick and deadly accurate to set up your lights and ratios with it.

Question > Do you just put the meter where the subject will be, flash the strobes, and then use the reading?

Yes, that is exactly how they work. You can also do it the other way around for studio strobes. For example: dial in iso100, 1/125sec on your meter. Then, if you want f4, you fire the strobes and take a reading with the meter. You then adjust lights up or down to try to get f4. Repeat this again until you get f4. You then set camera to this same setting.

Question > Do you think this meter is better than the Sekonic L-308S?

Many people prefer the Sekonic. They are do pretty much the same thing. This Polaris is just a bit cheaper in price. This particular Polaris model (SPD100) is a basic digital unit. In my opinion all the other options are really unnecessary.